Vigil
by Peptuck
Summary: Mankind has survived its crucible, and while scarred and changed by the Ethereals, they advance into the cosmos. The galaxy beyond is a place of wonder and terror, of wealth and strife. Amid the threats and opportunities, both within and without, XCOM remains vigilant. Mass Effect/XCOM/Eclipse Phase/FEAR/Destiny fusion.
1. Prologue: Archive

_**Vigil**_

_**Prologue: Archives**_

**Operation: Avenger - Log File: AA-3441**

**Transcript: Suit recording from XCOM Operative Colonel Annette Durand (PsiCorps)**

**File Restriction: TOP SECRET: EYES ONLY**

**Timestamp: Mission Time T+22:31**

_(recording shows death of MUTON ELITE (Designate: OpAvenger ET-ME-2) to plasma fire in upper torso by Colonel Durand)_

**T+22:31:** **Durand:** Another bastard down!

_(Recording shows door at rear of chamber has opened)_

**T+22:31:** **Durand:** Hawkeye?

**T+22:31:** **"Hawkeye":** All clear, nothing in my scopes ma'am.

**T+22:31:** **Durand:** Squad, move up! Gipsy take point!

**T:22:32:** **"Gipsy":** AFFIRMATIVE.

_(recording shows Major "Gipsy" Beckett advancing ahead of rest of squad toward open door. At this point OpAvenger ET-UE-1 ("UBER ETHEREAL") speaks again)_

**T+22:33: ET-UE-1:** The New One continues to surge…to prove that this was the worthy path, that we were justified in our efforts. This will bring about our redemption, and usher in our future.

**T+22:33:** **Durand:** Do you ever shut the fuck up?

_(timeskip: Timestamp T+22:38)_

_(recording shows engagement with ET-UE-1 from the perspective of Colonel Durand. Colonel Durand is firing a plasma rifle at ET-UE-1)_

**T+22:38: ET-UE-1:** Behold the greatest failure… of the Ethereal Ones… who failed to ascend as they thought we would. We who were cast out. We who were doomed to feed on the Gift of lesser beings… as we sought to uplift them… to prepare them… for what lies ahead...

**T+22:38:** **Durand:** Goddamn fucking right you were a failure!

_(timeskip to: Timestamp T+22:41)_

_(recording shows engagement with ET-UE-1 from the perspective of Colonel Durand. A MUTON ELITE (Designate ET-ME-5) is covering the retreat of ET-UE-1. Another ETHEREAL, ET-E-3, lies dead in the corner of the picture. Another MUTON ELITE, ET-ME-4, is being propelled through the air by a Kinetic Strike Module impact behind ET-UE-1 and ET-ME-5)_

**T+22:41: ET-UE-1:** The hunt draws to a close. It was not a vain undertaking… but a necessity, as our physical form has grown… ineffective. Our search for a perfect specimen was driven by our crippling limitation, and now, at long last…

**T+22:42:** **Durand**: At long last you have my boot up your ass, bastard! Hold still!

_(timeskip to: Timestamp T+22:43)_

_(recording shows ET-UE-1 under fire from Colonel Durand. Purple psionic energy is escaping from the body)_

**T+22:43: ET-UE-1:** This is not your path! Not your purpose! You need our guidance to hone this power… without us, what are you?

**T+22:44:** **Durand:** Better off, you piece of shit.

_(timeskip to: Timestamp T+24:43)_

_(recording shows ET-UE-1 collapsing to the floor. Purple psionic barrier is surrounding the entity, which is under heavy plasma fire from multiple sources)_

**T+22:44 ET-UE-1:** New One… we witness your intent. At the end, we understand. Preservation, not ascension. You deny our offer… in exchange for preserving your weak state...

_(recording shows more plasma striking ET-UE-1. Majority of impacts are deflecting off barriers. Colonel Durand closes with ET-UE-1)_

**T+22:58 ET-UE-1:** You have won a reprieve. But know this: your species has earned the attention of those infinitely your greater.

_(recording shows Colonel Durand pushing through psionic barrier using her own power)_

**T+23:06 ET-UE-1:** You cannot escape... ascension.

_(recording shows Colonel Durand breaking through the barrier and leveling her plasma rifle at ET-UE-1's head)_

**T+23:13 Durand:** But you won't live to see it.

_(recording shows Colonel Durand firing into ET-UE-1's head, disintegrating it)_

**END TRANSCRIPT**

* * *

**_Journal of XCOM Commander [REDACTED]_**

_Post-war didn't bring peace._

_I kept XCOM out of it, and thankfully, the Council didn't push us. I think they were terrified of what might happen if we started unleashing what we developed in conventional conflict among humans. Technically, it's in our charter, thanks to EXALT, but no one wants to see XCOM dropping in with Firestorms to kidnap your head of state. We killed plenty of human collaborators, and the post-war conflicts are against the countries that joined the aliens. South Africa. Egypt. Mexico. Argentina. China, Brazil, and India managed to escape it by executing everyone who they could find who collaborated, even the poor bastards that the Ethereals mind-controlled. I think if we lost any other countries then XCOM might not have been able to survive._

_And then there was the coalition-building. Post-war politics, all bullshit. Strategic Defense Coalition formed after China's old government collapsed when they executed their collaborators. ASEAN basically got rolled into the Strategic Defense Coalition. Apparently once they joined the aliens they stopped being attacked, which let them recover faster. SDC troops asserted authority in Afghanistan, bringing Iran and Pakistan into the fold with money and weapons. North Africa and the Middle East all becoming SDC puppets after that._

_European Union became stronger, as they got through the war without too much damage. North America finally coming together into one big United States of North America. Still think that's bullshit, and the politics involved went right over my head. US had to take control of Mexico after their government got subverted. At least the cartels were cleaned up. Pan-Pacific Alliance formed just after that, after Best Korea decided post-war was the best time to reunify and they got their teeth kicked in. Must have been drinking too much of their own Kool-Aid. Now we've got the USNA, Japan, Korea, Australia, Philippines, and New Zealand all allied to oppose the SDC._

_Brazil and the rest of South America spent a few years sorting out Argentina's subversion and collapse, before becoming one big happy family, and brought a bunch of south and western African countries into the fold too. Guess it was join the South Atlantic Federation or become another SDC fiefdom._

_Some countries got out of it without getting gobbled up. Russia. India. All those Central American countries somehow escaping the PPA. Israel. Turkey and Egypt ended up in the EU, though the latter's more of a military occupation. And all the coalitions are trying to get the "free countries" in bed. SDC squaring off against PPA and EU. EU and PPA circling the wagons and backing each other up. SAF and the independents trying to not get dragged into it. Russia building their own little coalition. Not quite World War One again, but it's not one world government either like we were hoping._

_Goddammit, we survived a fucking alien invasion, and seven years later we're right back where we started. We should have unified. Or at least stopped fighting. No shooting, of course, its all cyberwar and cultural and financial and trade bullshit and proxy conflicts. But we're still broken up into a mess of alliances and not looking at the real threats: EXALT and the Ethereals and whatever else might be out there._

_But I guess that's why XCOM exists. Because we can't count on each other, so we have to count on the few who can get shit done._

* * *

**_Excerpt from the research notes of Doctor Vahlen:_**

_Elerium uses psionics to generate power._

_A startling conclusion, at first, yet all observations point us along this path. We do not yet know the source of the energy generated by elerium or psionic powers, but we know they are tied together. Study of the energy signature released by many of the more advanced Ethereal technologies shows a developmental path focused on using psionics. Psionics for energy generation. Psionics for transportation. Psionics for communication. All of their technology draws upon the same source. Even Meld seems to use psionics as a catalyst; it doesn't work on plants or non-living material. It needs some form of psychic power to operate, even in extremely latent forms._

_There's no indication of the power's source, but it is present, and it fuels every aspect of the Ethereal's technology. Furthermore, I believe it is possible that psionics can be the key to elerium synthesis. A combination of the raw materials and psionic power should enable us to eventually begin manufacturing small quantities of elerium. And if it can be done, it would explain much of the Ethereals' interest in our species, and give us the ability to truly reach the stars._

_I suspect that we may be forced to rely on helium-3 fusion for much of our power generation simply due to ease of manufacture and availability, but with elerium supplementing our power supply, the possibilities are limitless. Of course, this is all theoretical; we will likely need to rely on limited elerium power to get into a position to deploy mining facilities in which we can harvest sufficient quantities of helium-3…_

* * *

**_From the journal of XCOM Commander [REDACTED]_**

_Council is getting tighter with the funds. Oh, sure, they give excuses. They need the money to rebuild, they can't throw away cash on an operation ten years old, they refuse to let an obvious puppet of blah blah blah. Its the world's biggest stable of bullshit._

_The real reason they're cutting funding is because I'm still holding to the charter and not giving up some of the tech they want. Alloys - the grunts keep calling it Vahlenite - lasers, plasma, alien biology, a lot of the pure conventionally-derived tech advancements like SHIVs, and even the alien navigation tech, that's all been released. Elerium research is out too, and so are a lot of the armor techs; there's too much wreckage scattered about the planet to keep that out of their hands anyway, not that they can do much with it. But our psionic research, hyperwaves, Meld, the Gallop Chamber device..._

_I have to be careful with this. Shen's been warning me about what might be done with some of that tech. And I'm keeping a close eye on it. We might release some of it later on, but I don't trust the world right now. Not just the politicians, either._

_EXALT is still out there._

_We have to be vigilant, and not just from enemies without._

* * *

**_Excerpt from the journal of Doctor Shen_**

_Despite years of effort and research, and an understanding of the nature of how the substance works, no scientist in XCOM has been able to break the secret of Meld. We can understand what it does, direct it to the ends we need, but the nanotech itself… It cannot be replicated. Attempts to reverse engineer it run into issues with generating the power and computational capacity to produce nanites that can achieve similar results, let alone actually replicating the genetic and cybernetic integration required. We can vaguely emulate the abilities of Meld through retroviral gene therapy and cybernetic surgery, and studying its effects has improved our knowledge of human augmentation by leaps and bounds, but Meld itself is a mystery._

_And I feel that the difficulty in replicating Meld is a blessing. The reason is simple: it makes it too easy to play with what we are. It is an easy path, a quick and simple way to turn a man into a genetic supersoldier or cybernetic warrior. In a time of war, while fighting for the very survival of our species, it proved incredibly useful. In a time of peace… disastrous. We do not need to research the associated technology to make these enhancements for ourselves. We do not undertake the decades of research to perform such modification. We do not fight through the social issues, the ethical problems, the conundrums a civilization must face to earn such knowledge. Meld simply gives us these gifts, without allowing us to learn. We are given the "how" without the "what" or the "why."_

_Like giving nuclear weapons to cavemen._

_I think that was the Ethereals' goal. To give us weapons before our time, to elevate us without the social and mental maturity to use these tools properly. Taking away limitations, enforcing artificial growth, molding the shape of our development like a bacteria culture in a petri dish. All to make us into weapons that would be dependent on them for control and guidance - and as weapons, mankind exceeded expectations, burning the very ones who gave us this fire._

_I've reviewed the final logs of Colonel Durand endlessly, listening to those messages that the alien leader sent before the Colonel gave her life to save us all. The Ethereal's last words told us that without them, we had no guidance to control the power they had given us. Was that the statement of a megalomaniac bent on controlling us, or a warning that we would destroy ourselves without carefully mastering this power?_

_At least the Commander has heeded my warnings._

* * *

**_Excerpt from the journal of XCOM Commander [REDACTED]_**

_In the thirteen years since Operation Avenger, we've seen so many psionics show up. The good news is that I managed to keep our funding and even expand it by leveraging some of our secrets._

_That, and I called dibs on the psionics._

_Oh, the Council members that hate XCOM's relative autonomy were pissed. But no one else is as qualified as XCOM to screen, train, and if necessary police human psionics. Most of the Council backed my proposal, though, even the pissed-off ones, because they couldn't exactly say no to the ones that saved mankind. And with us having the responsibility to train psychics, it gives us a whole lot more funding. After all, we can't synthesize elerium without psionics._

_We don't control the psychics, of course. I've made it clear that there's to be no brainwashing, no mind control, no implanting. Not like we have the Meld left to do that anyway; our Meld reserve is being kept under tight lock and key until we figure out how to replicate it, if we ever do. But we do keep the screening and training process under our control, and if anyone wants access to our pool of knowledge regarding the powers of the mind, they have to agree to that restriction._

_We'll have to be vigilant of course. The Council's agreed that only XCOM should be allowed to train psionics, but that won't stop some of them from trying to end-run us._

_The first Psi Academy is opening next year on Luna. We're not just going to be defending humanity anymore. We'll be leading it into the future._

* * *

**PRIORITY ONE HYPERWAVE TRANSMISSION: ALPHA PRIORITY CHANNEL**

**TIMESTAMP: 12:33 HOURS ZULU TIME, 4/6/2035**

**FROM: XCOM CENTRAL COMMAND: MARS DETACHMENT**

**TO: ALL XCOM FACILITIES IN SOL**

**CASE IRON DRAGON CONFIRMED - EXTRATERRESTRIAL PRESENCE DETECTED**

At 4 June, 2035, hyperwave sensors at XCOM Recon Site Theta-Kappa detected extraterrestrial construction on the south pole of Mars. Anomalous gravity shifts and energy signatures at site CONFIRMED to be caused by active extraterrestrial technology. All XCOM facilities are to initiate protocol CASE IRON DRAGON. Briefing packets are to be unlocked and standing military personnel are to go on full alert. All reserve and civilian staff are to be mobilized for possible military contact. All current Council government heads of state are to be alerted immediately.

Taskforce STRIKE-ONE personnel are to report to nearest XCOM facility for transportation and briefing.

* * *

**_From the journal of XCOM Commander [REDACTED]_**

_Its been two years since the biggest false alarm in the history of the human race. I don't think anyone breathed a bigger sigh of relief than we did when they turned out to be empty ruins and the active energy signature was just a malfunctioning core._

_Took us a long time to figure out what the hell we were looking at. I think we treated the devices in that outpost like everything except what they were. None of us thought we were entering an archive of all things. We all went in expecting to find an Ethereal monitoring station, or a base to launch attack craft, or some communications relay they had hidden away._

_Doctor Vahlen was first in there after the site was secured, and Dr. Shen came out of retirement so fast that we barely got him suited up properly to explore the site. Pushing eighty now and he didn't give a damn. He had to look at new tech, to figure out how it worked. And in six months he'd managed to crack the secrets of this technology._

_We had no idea what it was when we first looked at it. It wasn't Ethereal. Looked nothing like Ethereal tech, behaved nothing like it. If anything it resembled pre-Elerium tech. There were what we guessed were ships, but they couldn't hope to break atmosphere, not with their mass and power supply. Not until Shen and Vahlen studied them in minute detail, and noticed how a certain substance within the machinery was designed to receive an electrical charge. When they tested it, they discovered an electrical charge increases and decreases mass in a field around the material._

_Vahlen calls the substance "element zero." Because the stuff influences mass, she dubbed it a "mass effect." Straightforward. If we let the grunts name it, we'd likely end up with something silly._

_Element zero. Mass effect. The ability to literally alter the effective mass of an object by a positive or negative electrical charge. Incredible. It changes everything._

_But it was the archives that really got our attention. They confirmed what we suspected: we were looking at an old species, much older than ours, and nothing like the Ethereals. Protheans, they were called, and going by their recorded star charts, Vahlen theorizes that these ruins are fifty thousand years old._

_What happened to them? Are the Protheans gone? Did they run afoul of the Ethereals like we did, and get destroyed? If they did, why didn't the Ethereals use their technology? Could one of the species we were killing be the Protheans, turned into slaves of the Ethereals?_

_Too many questions, and no answers. We haven't even started to decipher the archives, to figure out what's intact and what's corrupt. Vahlen theorized that the Protheans appeared to operate with different senses than what humans are capable of, even our sensory psionics. This isn't even counting an extremely complex script. Vahlen theorizes that there could be thousands of different languages making up this archive's data store. It could take decades to even get started on translation._

_Until then, we have to act as normal. Study their technology. Understand them. I pray that the Protheans are gone, because I don't want to see a repetition of the previous war._

_But if they're not, if something is out there…. well, we're XCOM. We'll destroy them just like we destroyed the Ethereals._

* * *

_**Excerpt from the journal of Doctor Shen**_

_I feel young again._

_It is not simply the technology, although the chance to study and integrate new designs is welcome. It is the… purity of the work, I would say. Whenever I look at Ethereal-derived technology, I still see the twisted hulks of metal and flesh that we fought decades ago. I am confronted with the lengths we went to alter our own soldiers to match the enemy. I sublimated my ethical and moral reservations to win and survive._

_With Prothean technology, however, I do not have these issues. The ethical and moral simplicity of the technology helps. These devices are not made to twist a species into something it wasn't, to force evolution and subservience. They simply alter physics, without altering ourselves. I do not feel the pangs of guilt or the fears of complicity in the idea of remaking humanity itself into something horrific._

_Another issue is the relative simplicity, yet difficulty, of this new technology. I can experiment with element zero, building devices and creating designs, but so little of the Prothean ruins are functional. It forces me to think more than I did with the Ethereal technology, where I simply adapted what we stole from our enemy to our own ends. Nor do I feel the apprehension of knowing that I am working with technology that would have played a part in the Ethereals' plans to enslave us all._

_There have been some breakthroughs, limited though they are. I believe we will eventually be able to forge a faster-than-light engine, with the help of Doctor Vahlen's research, if her theory on how mass effect fields alter light speed itself. Even if that does not pan out, the fields themselves, coupled with elerium, would allow us casual interplanetary travel and space colonization. But there is so much more I think that could be possible with this technology._

_I know I don't have the time to discover it all. But, I can work in peace, and that has shaved a few decades off these old bones._

* * *

**_Excerpt from the research notes of Doctor Robert Boyle, XCOM_**

_While unable to precisely match the elegance, versatility, and simplicity of the Meld nanotech, we have made great strides in replicating many of the effects of these remarkable little devices. Study of Meld's effects has improved our capability at gene therapy and mechanical augmentation by leaps and bounds. I don't think we'll be able to make MEC personnel or advanced gene-mod troops standard, but with some proper research and application of our own treatments, we could eliminate most genetic diseases and strengthen the immune system, reduce aging, and more._

_But I think that one of the most promising applications would involve some adaptation of Ethereal computers, genetic research tools, and Meld-derived nanotech. The processing capability of these devices are extraordinary. Experimentation has shown that it is possible to include highly sophisticated sensory capability in specialized nanotech. These genetic tools could allow us to craft or alter existing human bodies to an unprecedented degree. Altered human genomes with special adaptations to zero gravity, aquatic environments, or surviving in harsh terrain uninhabitable by our current bodies. And with the Ethereals' technology, we could build specially "morphed" human bodies from the womb._

_But most intriguing, I believe, is that it is possible to use these tools to map a human brain to an exacting degree, right down to the individual connections between neurons that form the fundamental underpinnings of memory, skill, and personality. And if we can copy personality, we can transfer that personality to another brain. Or even an artificially-grown or assembled brain._

_Doctor Shen, my mentor, does not welcome this. He fears this technology, and I cannot entirely disagree with him. There are dangers inherent to such developments. But I cannot cast aside these gifts. We have earned them, one slain alien and fallen human at a time._

_Adaptable, designer human bodies. Transferrable minds. Functional immortality._

_Utterly terrifying, but also impossibly tantalizing. All possible with the technology we pried from the bloody hands of our would-be conquerors._

* * *

_**Excerpt from the research notes of Doctor Vahlen, XCOM**_

_Wormhole transition remains difficult, despite having all this time to study the Ethereals' technology. The challenge is not so much in targeting a point-to-point gateway so much as it is maintaining a gateway in the face of disruptive energy signals and conditions. We are able to open portals between points within a star system, but current range is limited to seven AU and the gate can only remain open for a few seconds. Thankfully, hyperwave scanning continues to maintain pace with wormhole range, so we are able to maintain up-to-date targeting that is vital to properly positioning wormhole openings._

_However, much like our issues with targeting terrestrial locations with precision hyperwave scanning, we cannot open a gate within a gravity well. There are complications both due to gravitational distortion as well as instability caused by friction with atmosphere and the much more severe problem of pressure differential between vacuum and atmosphere. And the strain on the wormhole psionics is so great that I cannot ask them to push themselves to force the wormhole open. It could kill them, and I will not have that on my conscience._

_We have not been able to determine how the Ethereals managed to bypass these issues. It may not even be possible to open a gateway for anything smaller than a craft the size of the Temple Ship. This would be consistent with alien behavior during the war, with UFOs being able to "vanish" once they left our atmosphere or appear without warning despite extensive scanning of the skies. They were never in orbit to begin with._

_Until we solve this problem, we will be forced to open gateways outside of atmosphere or strong gravity wells. Fortunately, our range outside of atmosphere is still extensive._

_Mass effect technology appears to be a much more viable option for extrasolar travel. I believe it possible that we could alter the properties of light with a strong enough mass effect field. Even more intriguing are some - purely theoretical currently - applications of wormhole generation coupled with mass effect fields…._

* * *

**_From the journal of XCOM Commander [REDACTED]_**

_Its the end of my career as XCOM's leader. The next Commander might actually get to keep his name as public record. Heh. Even after all these years we're still so secretive. The fact that we exist and what we do is public, but the details, the secret technologies, even the names of most of the soldiers and scientists and noncombat personnel still active are all secret. We've released a lot of the tech over the years, but Meld, the Gallop Chamber, some of the more… disturbing psionic tech… that's ours and its going to stay that way. I think that's fueled a lot of the resentment from Council nations._

_Despite that, XCOM is still spearheading our future as a species. We've started extrasolar exploration, finally. Vahlen's team of successors still hasn't gotten the psionic wormhole tech to extend past solar system ranges. I shouldn't expect miracles from them, though; they're not Vahlen's original team, and they're not… motivated as we were forty years ago. They keep talking about how they might be able to couple the wormhole with the mass relays to create some kind of long-range device, but the physics of it are purely theoretical._

_But we've still advanced by leaps and bits of Prothean records we discerned pointed us toward the Charon Mass Relay. I hate the idea that our FTL is limited by Prothean hardware, and that we haven't even begun to figure out those giant quantum-locked bastards. But we've still made use of alien tech as best we can._

_Politics, though… the more things change, the more they stay the same. Russians have formed a big coalition to play mediator in this idiotic cold war between the PPA/EU alliance and the SDC. XCOM's close to getting dragged into the whole thing, too. Big corporations - they're calling them "hypercorps" now, some trendy buzzword - have been setting up their own little capitalist fiefdoms on Mars and Venus and Titan._

_Weirdest of all, there was a revolution among the miners at Jupiter, backed by the SAF. Now they've formed a "Jovian Republic." More like a Jovian Junta. Place has been a magnet for the entire "bioconservative" movement opposed to the new augmentations and gene mods. Biocons, authoritarians, anti-alien survivalists, hyper-con militants, and pretty much anyone terrified of where the Ethereal tech is taking us, all flocking to that planet. Wouldn't matter much except that they own the best slingshot position in the system and control sixty percent of Sol's helium-3 production._

_This… is going to be trouble. I just know it. But its out of my hands now. On the plus side, the first extrasolar colony is going up next year. Arcturus is already being settled by those pioneer teams from the Armacham hypercorp, and they'll open the gate for civilian settlement._

_I hope I live to see it grow._

_I'm the last of the old team. Bradford, Vahlen, Shen, Durand, Zhang, Martinez…. We did good. I just hope we've prepared mankind for whatever lies beyond our solar system._

_Good luck, everyone. Godspeed._

* * *

**PRIORITY ONE HYPERWAVE TRANSMISSION: PRIORITY ALPHA CHANNEL**

**TIMESTAMP: 03:22 HOURS ZULU STANDARD TIME, 21/8/2103**

**FROM: XCOM ARCTURUS STATION**

**TO: ALL PPA, EU, SDC, SAF, ALLIED EARTH COUNCIL, AND XCOM FACILITIES**

**SUBJECT: CASE BLOODY JESTER CONFIRMED - HOSTILE EXTRASOLAR ALIEN CONTACT**

As of 21 August 2103: PPA colony on planet Lincoln of the in Caldera System in the Armstrong Nebula cluster reported unidentified alien contacts. USNA 77th Recon Flotilla frigates USN Outlier and USN Wildeye, Jovian Space Force 3rd Flotilla frigates JSF Bulwark and JSF Kitesfear, and XCOM frigate XCS Gettysburg were on station at the colony. Unidentified alien contacts opened fire upon USN, JSF, and XCOM ships after transmitting an unclear broadcast. Both USN recon ships transmitted transcripts, sensor data, and navigation data before being overwhelmed. Final transmissions indicate self-destruction to prevent capture of sensitive technology and personnel. Enemy technology consistent with mass effect artifacts recovered from Prothean ruins. Sensor returns are NOT consistent with Prothean structural patterns.

Emergency hyperwave beacons triggered from colony surface before power grid disabled by orbital fire. Last transmissions indicate hostile landing in progress.

CASE BLOODY JESTER is now in effect. All military assets are to go to full alert and prepare for immediate action. Reserve units are to be mobilized for deployment.

XCOM rapid-response units are mobilized. XCOM Direct Action Task Force Seven has been dispatched to Arcturus Wormhole Relay.

**FULL XCOM REARMAMENT APPROVED BY COUNCIL ORDER 112-A90.**

* * *

**For additional information on the technology, organizations, and species in this setting, please see the Vigil: Codex and Supplemental Information story.**

* * *

**Author's Notes: **The idea for this one has been percolating in my head for a while, and I eventually had to write it lest it drive me insane. I'll say right off the bat that Agayek's _XCOM: Second Contact_ was a big inspiration for this, along with IgnusDei's _Mass Effect: Human Revolution_ and Earthscorpion's A_eon Natum Engel/Aeon Entelechy Evangelion _stories for being the big, direct influences on how I approached this story. It was originally written as a straight Mass Effect/XCOM crossover, but the story I started writing was _dreadfully_ derivative and unoriginal. It wasn't until I started experimenting with other settings that I realized drawing elements from FEAR and Eclipse Phase and... other sources would provide some interesting wrinkles into the setting. After several revisions, I finally hit on an idea that I liked. Thus, Vigil.

This story is primarily a Mass Effect and XCOM fusion. Its following my fairly standard formula with these fusions: Mass Effect's larger galaxy is the core backdrop, with elements from other franchises integrated. **Don't worry if you're unfamiliar with Eclipse Phase.** The EP elements will be generally explained by context and some exposition, and for the most part I'll try to keep things clear. I'll mostly be drawing from the transhuman elements of EP's setting, mostly as a means to help define the society and culture of post-Ethereal War humanity.

Another thing I really wanted to develop with this setting is internal politics. In a lot of crossover/fusions, humanity is a single unified force, and in a lot of XCOM crossovers, XCOM is the primary human military. I'm attempting to avoid that, mostly because the story becomes a lot more interesting in my opinion when you have many conflicting interests and your protagonist military isn't superpowered and massive.

One last, crucial, important thing I need to make clear:** This isn't going to be a stompfic,** and the Citadel is not going to get wrecked by plasma fire. If you came to read a story about XCOM kicking turian ass and pimp-slapping asari, hit your browser's back button and go read something else.


	2. One: CASE BLOODY JESTER

_**Vigil**_

_**Chapter One: CASE BLOODY JESTER**_

The _XCS Gettysburg_ cruised through the void over the gas giant of Hallis (or New Augustus, according to the Jovians), following its regular patrol path between the helium mining facilities and outlying habitats on its various moons. The dull brown bands circling the Jupiter-sized gas giant were reflected off the smooth vahlenite hull plating of the dagger-like frigate. The hydrogen-helium giant was unremarkable, especially compared with the hothouse giant Malachi further in-system.

"_JSF Bulwark_ has sent us another demand for authentication," Lieutenant Carter reported, his tone faintly amused. "They're asking for updates almost as much as you do, Captain."

Captain Davis Chi grunted an acknowledgement as he walked across his frigate's bridge. The oval-shaped room was dominated by a central holographic projector displaying a model of the Hoc system. Half a dozen crewmen, his primary command staff, were seated around the projector, hands moving over the haptic interfaces of their consoles. They spoke quietly or worked in silence, communicating with either their muses or other infomorphs like Carter. All wore the olive green vacuum jumpsuits of XCOM naval crew.

Chi paced around the bridge, his vision filled with data feeds from his ship, projected onto his retina by his augmented reality implants. He barely paid any attention to the feeds; long experience would show him any abrupt changes to the scrolling graphs or text readouts, and anything truly important would be instantly flagged by his muse or one of the informorphs running the ship's second-to-second operations.

The Captain didn't bother asking if Carter had responded; long practice had shown that Carter would have already sent a reply. The Jovians demanded authentication every time the _Gettysburg_ passed through their claimed airspace over Hallis, just like they did every ship that entered their space. It was only partially paranoia, as the PPA had claimed the other half of Hallis' airspace for their mining, and the Jovian and PPA miners had been bitter rivals over Hallis' bounty of fuel since the colony was established eight months ago.

Hoc had been named by some unimaginative infomorph surveyor in the big rush after the Arcturus Wormhole Relay had managed to lock into the relay in this cluster. The name had come during initial surveys, before anyone had actually probed the system. The discovery of the third planet, bearing a breathable oxygen-nitrogen atmosphere and levo-amino ecology had drawn near immediate claim and settlement by the PPA, although the Jovians had been right on their heels. Unable to claim the lush third planet for their own, the Jovians fell back to their own strengths and colonized much of the gas giant's moons and airspace.

"Nothing on hyperwave?" Chi asked as he paused before the hologram. It showed several hundred immediate contacts, all civilian ships, save for four marked warships: the two United States of North America guards and the pair of Jovian Space Force sentinels watching their respective interests.

"As usual, nothing to report," Carter replied. "Just like it was ten minutes ago, sir."

Chi nodded. Carter was a bit flippant for a military officer, but he'd never crossed over into insubordination. They both understood, though, that they had to be cautious when patrolling over Hallis/New Augustus. _Gettysburg's_ official job was to defend the colonies against alien threat - in fact, an XCOM ship was required to patrol every human system by international agreement - but its other job was to make sure everyone in-system played nice by its mere presence.

Which meant if something happened between the PPA and Jovians, _Gettysburg_ would be right in the middle of it. It made for a compelling reason to watch the hyperwave like a hawk.

The other reason was much more curious.

Chi's fingers twitched, which brought up menus on his AR display. A few more minute gestures took him into the _Gettysburg's_ secured files, and he reviewed the sensor logs from the last couple of days. Yesterday there had been a small Cherenkov radiation burst on the edge of the system. Not anything particularly strange; when he'd first detected it Chi had assumed it was a probe from another of the major powers, sent in through mass effect faster-than-light drive. Naturally, all three military forces in the system had run a hyperwave scan across the system for the probe, because no accompanying burst indicating a jump out of the system had occurred.

Under normal circumstances, sweeping the area around the probe would eventually have picked it out, and someone would have sent a drone or fighter to jump in and blow it up. But despite two days of active hyperwave scanning, they had yet to pick up the probe. Chi didn't know the physics behind hyperwaves, but he understood their capabilities and limitations; while they allowed faster than light scanning and communication, the hyperwave sensors could only scan so much of an area at a time.

If someone had managed to get that probe to escape the search zone without being detected, or even more worrying, developed a way to hide from hyperwaves that didn't involve gravity wells, it would be a serious game-changer.

"Have we been able to get anything more from this Cherenkov reading?" Chi asked.

"Nothing substantial," Carter replied. "The signal was too grainy and background radiation doesn't provide us with enough of a silhouette. And if the PPA or Jovians have anything sharper, they haven't told us anything."

Chi nodded, disappointed but not surprised. He turned back to the local display, which showed him both conventional and hyperwave sensor feeds of the myriad craft moving through the Hallis/New Augustus habitation zone. Bulky, rotund helium tankers were moving between the scoops in the giant's atmosphere, ferrying freshly mined fuel to processor stations. About fifty space habitats hung in orbit, mostly around Hallis' miniscule rings, most of them simple rotating cylinders. There were other habitats on the various moons, but nothing that broke the ten thousand population mark yet - unlike Lincoln, where the PPA population had shot up to the two hundred thousand mark already.

They were a hundred thousand kilometers out from the nearest Jovian warship, _JSF Bulwark._ Unlike the XCOM frigate, it was a lean, angular craft. It kept the dagger-like shape of the XCOM design, but where the _Gettysburg_ was made of curving lines, resembling an elongated, scaled-up version of the old Firestorms, the Jovian ship was sharper and more angular. The main guns on the Jovian frigate were visible even at this range, the red lines of the laser cannons visible on both thermal and visual scanners.

"Sir, unscheduled Cherenkov burst," Carter reported, a heartbeat before a marker appeared on the holographic display. Chi frowned at it, leaning forward, and brought up sensor readings on his augmented reality display. Anyone doing FTL jumps in-system had to announce their intent to do so ahead of time, lest the radiation burst from their transition set off an itchy trigger finger.

The new arrival - no, arrivals - had come out of faster-than-light about one light second from Hallis' security perimeter. Thermals spoke of seven distinct contacts, five of frigate tonnage and two of cruiser tonnage.

"Thermal profile is unknown," Carter reported, his voice shifting from curiosity to alarm. "Sir, I've got high energy output, but nothing matching our energy signatures." On Chi's display, he could see readouts on the new arrivals' emissions: mass effect signatures and eezo masses, but no indications of elerium.

Chi didn't respond verbally. Instead, he direct-linked and sent out immediate alerts and orders over the _Gettysburg's_ wireless mesh network: General quarters, emergency hyperwave alerts, and lay in an intercept course, all in immediate text format. He also ordered channels opened to all the other warships in-system. Chi then paused for a heartbeat to check and make sure that the entire crew had been properly backed up within the last day. He nodded when he received confirmation that everyone's cortical stacks and egos were copied and being sent as part of the out-system hyperwave transmissions. No need to risk permanent death.

The _Gettysburg_ powered up, deck vibrating and shifting beneath Chi's feet. Messages flashed back and forth on his AR display, periodic murmurs from the crew the only sound over the humming of electrical equipment and vibrating metal. The warship always went deathly silent on combat maneuvers as everyone switched over to rapid-fire data transmission.

_"Sir,"_ Carter reported, his words coming in as a direct data feed across Chi's AR display, "_I've run a full analysis on the contacts' profiles. No match to any known human or Ethereal ship design. Not even theoretical models."_

_"Then we've either got a completely new human ship type or a new X-Ray,"_ Chi replied. He brought up more detailed sensor models on the ships. Emission and visual plotting revealed something very strange: long, rounded craft that very vaguely resembled the curvature and lines of the smaller Ethereal scouts. They almost looked like oblong, wingless wasps with their legs flush against their bodies, and Chi could make out rough head, body, and thorax-like sections.

_"Definitely nothing humanlike,"_ he muttered out loud. He checked time to intercept and firing solutions, but the gunnery crew - both biological and infolife - had already plotted solutions and were waiting on fire orders. Laser batteries, mass accelerators, and the Gettysburg's forward plasma cannon were ready to fire.

"Send out the first contact package," he ordered. "All bands."

There was a moment of hesitation before the comms officer sent an acknowledgement. Understandable. No reason to expect aliens to be friendly after the first contact last time.

_"Channel open to JSF Bulwark,"_ another of the informorph crew reported. Chi tapped the link that appeared at the corner of his sight, and the face of Commander Ferebee of the JSF Bulwark appeared in place. He was a lean, hatchet-faced officer in his forties, who wore his blue Jovian uniform jumpsuit with the natural ease of long experience.

_"Captain Chi, do we have a plan?"_ he messaged.

Chi snorted. XCOM always had a plan. This sort of thing was what they spent decades preparing for.

But more telling was the immediate deference to a ship they had just been challenging for authentication minutes prior. Every child born after the Ethereal War had been raised with a deep respect - and in some places, even reverence - for XCOM's actions in the war. The truth had been kept quiet, but everyone knew that XCOM had played a pivotal role in the survival of mankind, and that had set up one hell of a tradition that they worked to live up to. XCOM's actual military force was a fraction of the major military powers', but when it came anything that could involve alien life, whether it was exploration, colonization, or security, they deferred to XCOM.

The Captain sent nonverbal orders out to the rest of the system's ships, outlining his plan. The Jovians responded immediately, the PPA only a moment after them.

_"Hyperwave?"_ he queried, directing it toward his sensor officer.

_"Nothing identifiable,"_ the officer replied. _"Whatever's on that ship definitely isn't human, but I can't pin anything down at all. Crew might be synthetic."_ There was a pause. _"Something vaguely matching the old Seekers and Sectopods, but its iffy. Alien equivalent of a synthmorph, maybe."_

"Keep trying," Chi replied. He shifted attention to heat loads and the locations of the PPA frigates. A radiation burst reported that the _USNA Outlier_ had just hopped from deeper in the system to Hallis's orbit, close to the rest of the mixed-nation fleet. Wormholes were faster and more precise in in-system jumping, but there was no need to give away that capability to the enemy.

Potential enemy, he reminded himself. He checked comms, but the officer reported no response to the first contact package. That wasn't good.

Heat load reports indicated they had plenty of combat time, even with the radiation from Hallis and the _Gettysburg_ running at sudden combat power output.

_Outlier, Wildeye, Bulwark,_ and _Kitesfear_ were closing, and Chi readied himself. The arrivals were advancing, their formation spread out. It was an obvious attack vector. The Captain leaned over the hologram, eyes watching them intently, either for transmission or-

Abrupt sensor returns marked a cascade of thermal emissions from the ships, and a volley of fast-moving objects screaming toward the five human frigates. Mass accelerator fire.

_"Under fire!"_ he broadcast across the ship, and alarms sounded across the bridge. _"Initiate wormhole transitions!"_

For the second time in a century, humanity was at war with an alien power.

* * *

Lieutenant Adrian Carter watched the battle erupt with interest, even as he multitasked across the _Gettysburg's_ internal network, exchanging data with the other infomorphs operating the frigate's systems. The physical crew in their biological or augmented bodies handled physical work and overall command duties, but it was the intelligences that threaded throughout the frigate who managed much more complex and time-critical tasks.

Like most infomorph crew, Carter was an uploaded human ego. He'd volunteered to become a part of the _Gettysburg_ itself, leaving his previous body in cold-storage for this tour of duty. Most informorphs who got uploaded to combat ships viewed it as an easy career path, but XCOM was careful with its digital crewmen, only picking both the most motivated and competent to take on the crucial virtual roles. Carter sat at the "command" level of the _Gettysburg's_ digital crew, interfacing with the Captain and other department heads, as well as monitoring sensors and comms.

That meant his position made him an effective go-between in combat, and thus he had a front-row seat to the oncoming wave of destruction but little ability to alter the situation.

He had, however, been instrumental in coming up with Chi's battleplan for an attack. The basic idea involved offensive wormhole use coupled with the particular strengths of the ships. The Jovians' frigates were designed for defense foremost, having multiple batteries of laser point defense systems coupled with redundant reactors and heavy armor, whereas the PPA's ships were optimized for assaults with powerful forward-firing laser, kinetic, and plasma arrays.

The _JSF Bulwark_ and _Kitesfear_ moved to intercept position, weaving around the incoming volleys of mass accelerator fire and answering with their own guns. At this range, the fast-firing enemy weapons didn't have the speed to catch up with the agile, if heavily-armored, Jovian frigates.

Behind them, the PPA and XCOM ships powered up their wormhole generators. The most crucial crewmen on the ships initiated the Durand-Vahlen Spatial Transition drives, and power flashed through the ships and out of special conduits in their bows. Purple light erupted and shaped into a brilliant disc before each of the frigates, and they dove in. Carter braced himself - as much as he could, considering he was a being entirely stored on the optical drives of an XCOM frigate. There was a buzzing that ran through the ship's electronics, and he was briefly disoriented by the shift in space-time but it was momentary, and he knew he was better off than the organic crew.

The three frigates burst out of the wormholes through openings directly behind the attacking fleet, and whirled around. Plasma, laser, and kinetic weapons unloaded almost instantly into the rear of the attacking frigates. They were close enough to inspect visually, and Carter was intrigued by the elegant and almost familiar curves of their designs. Green bolts of plasma, burning red lasers, and solid vahlenite rounds from mass accelerator rails slammed into the backsides of the cruisers as they turned to face the attackers…

And with the exception of the lasers, which slashed into the hulls of the ships and blasted superheated vapor from their plating, every shot bounced off some shimmering, thin barrier twenty meters from the warships' hulls that gleamed a faint blue in the visual spectrum.

_"Oh, shit,"_ Carter involuntarily transmitted, right before a storm of return fire poured toward the frigates. Evasive maneuvers began almost immediately, the PPA and XCOM frigates juking and weaving, but kinetic rounds slammed into the ships, shaking them violently. Were it not for their vahlenite hulls, they would have taken severe damage.

_"Wormhole us out of here!"_ Chi messaged, before a direct impact blasted a gaping hole in the internal network. Carter jumped through the ship, distributing his processes and restoring damaged sections from archives. He began running an analysis on the enemy weapons while other infomorph crew sent their own reports.

_"Hostile data packets in the mesh!"_ messaged Ensign Haleen, who was their cyberwarfare specialist. _"I'm purging them, but they're adapting fast."_ There was a millisecond pause. _"Fascinating complexity…."_

_"Internal damage severe,"_ reported Ensign Bjoric, monitoring the operations and engineering. _"Power redistributed."_ The Ensign patched together a damage report and bounced it around the network, and Carter took a moment to check it before passing it to the Captain. One of the enemy shots had penetrated starboard decks, knocking out some of their point defense lasers and cutting power to the forward plasma cannons. No crew injured, though it had caused some damage to secondary data storage for the infomorph crew.

Carter's initial analysis finished. Sensors indicated dark energy manipulation and some kind of directed gravity barrier. The enemy had managed to make some kind of defensive shield using mass effect technology. Fascinating. Radiation analysis came back a moment later, giving him a rough hull composition of the enemy ships.

If Carter had blood, it would have run cold. Unlike the shields, he recognized this technology.

He compressed the findings and sent them to the Captain, right as another wormhole opened and they transitioned out of the immediate line of fire.

* * *

Chi spared a couple of seconds to read the analysis Carter had sent him, as the _Gettysburg, Outlier,_ and _Wildeye_ regrouped. The Jovians were trading shots with several of the enemy frigates, but they were having as much luck as the rest of the fleet. Their best long-range weapons were their main plasma cannons, which were just as ineffective.

"Some kind of kinetic energy barrier," he transmitted to the fleet as the three battered frigates came around and began another wormhole transition. Three jumps this close together were straining the crewmen who interfaced with the Durand-Vahlen drives, but they had to redeploy quickly to hit the enemy. "Plasma weapons completely ineffective. The shields stop the plasma before impact, and far enough out that radiation only does superficial damage.

"Spectral analysis also confirms that the enemy are using a derivative of valhenite, though with a significantly heat resistant composition going by these readings."

The conclusion went unspoken. This was an enemy who was armed specifically to fight their technology.

"Lasers appear to be our most effective weapon, as they can bypass these kinetic shields. Mass accelerators might be able to penetrate their hulls and shields, but only with massed fire."

The wormholes drives activated, and the three frigates redeployed to Hallis' immediate orbit, several thousand kilometers out from the Jovian ships.

"Orient and engage with mass accelerators," he ordered. "Hold these bastards off as long as possible, until we can egocast the colonists back to safety."

He paused, bringing up the statistics regarding the Jovian population on the Hallis stations. As he did so, he could feel the _Gettysburg_ maneuvering underneath him, mass accelerators firing at the enemy frigates.

The numbers weren't good. More than half of the Jovian population voluntarily went without cortical stacks due to various beliefs regarding transhuman technology. That meant that their egos were not regularly backed up, and they would need to be evacuated physically.

He scowled, watching his crew as they engaged the enemy. Evacuation was rapidly becoming their only viable option. The five human frigates were severely outgunned, and the enemy had a perfect counter to their primary weapons. Reinforcements were no doubt scrambling already, but it would be at least half a day before ships could arrive from the Sentry Omega wormhole station via mass effect drives.

But XCOM was not going to leave living humans in alien hands. The Ethereal War had taught them that in gruesome detail.

_"Captain, what if they bypass us at Hallis?"_ Commander Ferebee messaged. _"The PPA colonies are protected only by orbital weapon stations."_

_"Then we jump after them,"_ Chi replied. _"Outlier and Wildeye will move to intercept if the enemy disengages and goes after the colonies."_

But the enemy seemed intent on taking out the warships over Hallis. Their frigates criss-crossed the space over the planet, firing at long ranges, as if they knew that the only effective weapons that the humans had were short-ranged, and that the only effective military force in-system was at Hallis.

Chi ran the evacuation numbers. Getting the hundreds of thousands of physical bodies off-planet would take hours with their available lift capacity; colonial policy was that there would always be enough lift capacity on hand to get the population of a colony to safety, but getting those ships active, organizing them, getting the people on board, and transporting them out would take time.

_"We have to hold the line and keep them busy,"_ he ordered. _"Buy the colonists time to escape. With our own blood if necessary."_

* * *

The five frigates fought for two hours straight, a constant, high speed battle of attrition. The aliens attacked with relentless focus, pursuing the human ships across the space over Hallis, keeping their distance and pummeling away with constant barrages of mass accelerator fire and a near-endless assault via electronic warfare. During that time, Lincoln and Hallis were constantly firing off hyperwave bursts and launching ships carrying the physical bodies of the colonists, waging their own frantic battle of logistics to get everyone to safety.

_JSF Bulwark_ was the first frigate to fall. A combination of damage, heat buildup, and constant breaches of its wireless network by hostile, adapting viruses finally slowed it down enough that four mass accelerator shots gutted it amidships. Despite its tough vahlenite construction and Jovian overengineering, _Bulwark_ broke apart, half the ship tumbling away into Hallis' depths.

It did not fall unavenged, however, for a few minutes afterward, concentrated fire from the human fleet caught up to and blew apart an enemy frigate, blasting apart its engines and sending it in a ballistic course toward Hallis' rings, where it was shorn apart a few minutes later by rock fragments and micrometeorites.

_USNA Wildeye_ died fifteen minutes later. Multiple impacts along the bow penetrated into the command center and killed half the crew. Infomorph crew took over for several minutes, desperately keeping the frigate alive until it could careen close enough to another alien frigate and blow it out of space before finally being torn to pieces.

_USNA Outlier_ died three minutes later, finally succumbing to heat buildup and enemy fire. A shot tore apart its reactor, leaving it on a terminal ballistic trajectory that the enemy easily predicted. They angled multiple shots into the frigate's path and shredded it.

Two hours into the engagement, Lincoln warned that they had several thousand people to still evacuate, while Hallis' population was almost entirely gone. By that time, _XCS Gettysburg_ and _JSF Kitesfear_ were on their last legs.

_"Get as many people out as you can,"_ Captain Chi messaged. He was wrapped in multiple bloody bandages. No shots had penetrated the bridge, but twice he'd been violently thrown about when the ship was hit, before he'd finally secured himself in his chair.

On the sensor display, he watched _Kitesfear_ suddenly alter course, charging an enemy frigate with an abrupt, deadly flare of engine emissions. It close to near point-blank range and opened fire, tearing into the frigate and blowing it apart. seconds later, enemy fire intersected its path and annihilated the Jovian ship in a torrent of twisted metal and blazing heat.

_"Gentlemen,"_ he transmitted, a cold calm falling over his body. His crew turned toward him - those that weren't keeping the frigate alive, that was. He saw fear in their eyes, along with resignation, anger, and defiance.

_"One day, each of us will stand on the Memorial with Durand,"_ he said. _"This day, we earned that particular honor. Fortunately, final death will not come for us, so we'll all get a chance to keep killing these bastards. I'm transmitting final ego backups. Helm, wormgate team, here are your coordinates. Tactical, you'll know what to do."_

He paused, and smiled.

"Vigilo Confido," he spoke out loud, and the crew echoed his words as the final hyperwave went out. A moment later, the wormhole opened, and they plunged through.

_Gettysburg_ dropped out of a precisely calculated hole in space-time directly to the rear of the most badly-damaged enemy cruiser, and opened fire the instant it emerged. Every weapon poured fire into its wounded aft end. Lasers poured beams of destruction through the rent its quasi-Vahlenite hull. Mass accelerators pounded the weakened kinetic barriers, and for a moment they collapsed. Plasma, so ineffective against shields, washed over the damaged cruiser, burning deep into its hull, vaporizing exposed decks.

The _Gettysburg_ poured fire into the alien cruiser, striking deep into its heart, and before it could do more than start to fire its maneuvering thrusters, the XCOM gunners found its heart and tore it loose. The main reactor was blown apart, sending the alien ship tumbling out of control toward Hallis.

Return fire came within seconds, intersecting on the _Gettysburg_.

Captain Davis Chi did not feel it when he died. Kinetic rounds tore through his bridge, vaporizing him and his command crew at the moment of their final triumph, and rending the _Gettysburg_ apart.

* * *

**Broker File AA36471-999-CNC**

**Flagged: High Priority**

**Excerpt: Closed Council Session re: AA-3391 R-991 incident**

**Councilor Tevos:** Dimal, what is the urgency?

**Councilor Dimal:** War, my fellow Councilors.

**Councilor Graccius:** A bit dramatic there, Dimal? War is a possibility that we have to deal with every day.

**Councilor Dimal:** It is noteworthy when the war is between an unknown and a barely-understood mystery.

**Councilor Tevos:** Explain, Dimal. Who is at war?

**Councilor Dimal:** The geth.

_(several moments of silence)_

**Councilor Graccius:** I assume you have intelligence confirming this?

**Councilor Dimal:** Of course. Observe. _(sound of an omnitool activating)_ Along the edge of the Perseus Veil. Cluster 442310-33, unnamed with no known claims. Region has little apparent strategic value except that its primary relay can offer access to the Veil and several Terminus border systems, and has multiple secondary relays to neighboring clusters, all with limited value. Special Tasks Group placed probes to monitor the nebula's systems many years ago. They currently report an engagement between an unknown force and what appears to be a fleet that matches geth energy signatures with seventy-two percent certainty.

**Councilor Graccius:** Concerning. Who are they at war with?

**Councilor Dimal:** Unknown at this time. Conflict appears to be limited to the singular system. Lack of information on either combatant has produced limited workable intelligence on disposition or deployments. In addition...

_(pause for three seconds)_

**Councilor Tevos:** Dimal?

**Councilor Dimal:** What limited data we have been able to obtain indicates that the exchange between the combatants included intense, long-range, directed thermal energy bombardment.

**Councilor Tevos:** Thermal bombardment? Is that confirmed?

**Councilor Dimal:** The reports and visual data indicate warping of hull plating consistent with high-intensity thermal radiation. Patterns are consistent with exposure to vented reactor plasma. However, exposure is too consistent to be anything but weapons bombardment, and it appears to be using plasma on a scale we haven't seen before.

**Councilor Graccius:** Interesting. Kinetic barriers should render plasma weapons ineffective….

**Councilor Dimal:** I will of course forward a full analysis of the energy readings to you, Councilor.

**Councilor Tevos:** This is… very disturbing. We must act quickly.

**Councilor Graccius:** Agreed. The new species' technology is disturbing for other reasons. This nebula is close to the Terminus Systems, on the border. Terminus interests will take note and may react. If you will, Councilors, I must mobilize a Citadel taskforce to staging positions in the Traverse in case the situation escalates further.

**Councilor Tevos:** Prudent. Advise your commanders to avoid conflict if possible, unless the threat moves beyond the Veil itself. I will begin assembling diplomatic missions to this new species. Dimal, I expect you will keep us fully informed on all new developments.

**Councilor Dimal:** Of course. I have already authorized further STG deployments to the area. Once we have learned more of the belligerents, you will be informed.

_(Councilors Graccius and Dimal depart - see video record in file AV333471-N12. Pause for nineteen seconds)_

**Councilor Tevos:** Goddess. Plasma weapons.

_(Pause for seven seconds)_

**Councilor Tevos:** Its happening _again_.

**End transcript**

* * *

**Author's Notes: **You might have already figured it out, but the system where the battle took place in is the Hoc system, where a certain tropical planet featured fairly prominently in the first Mass Effect game. In this case, Virmire was named Lincoln, and Cloroplon is named Hallis/New Augustus.

Also, because this keeps cropping up in reviews, I think its time to review some elementary physics which explains why kinetic barriers work on plasma. The most common complaint is that plasma should go right through kinetic barriers because its energy. This is flat-out incorrect; plasma is not energy, it is a state of matter and therefore has mass. Anything with mass will be blocked by a kinetic barrier. Now, plasma is a dispersed form of matter, and thus will not impact with the same amount of kinetic energy as a liquid, let alone a solid projectile. Plasma will be stopped cold by kinetic barriers.

For why plasma is so ineffective against ships despite its high energy state, one has to remember the fundamentals of heat transfer. The damage that plasma does comes from extremely high amounts of thermal energy being transferred into the target. This can occur through radiation (the transfer of heat through electromagnetic radiation), convection (transfer of heat through fluid motion) and conduction/diffusion (transfer of heat through physical contact). Of these, radiation is the least efficient while conduction is the most efficient. Radiation transfers very little heat, especially through a vacuum. Plasma halted by a kinetic barrier will only be transferring heat into the target vessel via radiation, and the heat from the plasma will be radiating in all directions, the majority of which will be away from the ship. If the plasma hit the ship directly, heat would be transferred through conduction and be vastly more efficient and do a lot more damage to the target.

This is, of course, affected by the environment, or lack thereof, when it comes to space combat. Space combat occurs in a vacuum, which further limits heat transferred through radiation. On the other hand, heat is much more efficiently transferred through an atmosphere through convection. For this reason, kinetic barriers will be less effective in ground combat as opposed to space combat.

There has been an argument made that plasma would pass through kinetic barriers due to its low velocity and mass, but this ignores some important aspects of both kinetic barriers and how space combat works. First, even if the plasma is moving at a small fraction of the speed of a kinetic round, its still moving really fast, and if its being used in space combat, it is already moving at stupendous speeds. Any spacecraft or other object in space is already going to be moving at great speeds to begin with, and a munition of any kind, whether it be a kinetic round or mass of ionized atoms like plasma, will have to move faster than said ships if they want to hit them. In space combat, plasma will be moving at extreme speeds simply to hit enemy ships and will therefore trigger kinetic barriers.

This is, of course, actually irrelevant, because while kinetic barriers to have a minimum velocity in which they trigger, this is a user-imposed limitation to allow infantry and vehicles to operate in an atmosphere. Infantry and vehicles regularly need to interact with their environment (if only for traction to move around) so a minimum velocity is necessary. Spacecraft do not have this issue; any direct contact with another object in space is going to be either under very controlled circumstances or in a situation where you would want to block the incoming mass or object. It doesn't matter what velocity the plasma is moving at in space, because sensors will pick it up and the KBs will always activate to intercept. Furthermore, we know that there actually is no minimum velocity that an object can move at to bypass the barrier. There are multiple instances across the Mass Effect series where kinetic barriers are used to stop or contain slow-moving or low-mass substances, including atmosphere. Again: it is a _user-imposed limitation_ to allow soldiers to interact with their environment, and any user-imposed limitation can be readily changed to fit the situation. It would be trivial to reprogram infantry and vehicle kinetic barriers to react to the distinct signature of incoming plasma fire. They'll still have to deal with heat transfer through convection, of course.

I've done my research, both regarding the real-life physics of plasma (which is amusingly different from how it works in XCOM) and regarding Mass Effect's technology. This is how it would most likely work.


	3. Two: Operation LIGHTNING KING

_**Chapter Two: Operation Lightning King**_

"Stellar plot and hyperwave link, Lieutenant," Rear Admiral Elena Dolvich ordered as she fought to settle her stomach. "Where are we?"

"Working," replied the navigation officer. The young man's tone made it obvious that he was fighting his own negative reaction to the transition through the Arcturus-Sentry Omega wormhole. "We're two light-seconds out from the Sentry Omega gate, ma'am. It was a clean transition."

"Excellent," Dolvich said with grim nod. Her accent was moderately thick with her Russian roots, but she spoke perfect English - unlike many in her family, who struggled even with autotranslators. Her stomach stopped trying to fight through her esophagus, and she focused on incoming data feeds. Strike Seven Delta had indeed exited the wormhole within two light-seconds, which was well within the established margins. One never knew precisely where one was going to end up when passing through a wormhole gateway.

The _Halberd_-class XCOM carrier _XCS Chevalier's_ bridge had a similar layout to smaller ships' command centers: an oval room with a central hologlobe to display tactical information, surrounded by crew stations. Although in the carrier's case, the Admiral's chair overlooked the bridge, and there was a separate section toward the bow of the compartment for the pilot and tactical officers. Everyone wore the dark olive vacuum-rated jumpsuits of XCOM crew.

"Captain Chi?" Dolvich asked once she had confirmed their location on the sensors, and located the rest of Strike Seven Delta's flotilla.

Next to Dolvich's command chair, a waist high cylindrical tank lit up. Light twisted and shaped into the form of a lean man in glowing XCOM greens, his skin a pale blue. His features matched the currently dead commanding officer of the XCS Gettysburg.

"I am… present, ma'am," Captain Davis Chi replied.

"Been a while since you resleeved?" Dolvich asked with a faint ghost of a smile.

"I haven't experienced infolife form in a long time, Admiral," Chi replied, shaking his head.

"They'll get you a body once we're finished taking back our system," Dolvich said, smile fading. "But I need your tactical input now."

"Of course," Chi replied, and an edge of eagerness entered his tone. "I want to see these bastards burn."

Nothing like the knowledge that you died at enemy hands to drive you toward revenge.

"Make sure the taskforce is locked in on the same vector and prepare for FTL," Dolvich called to her officers. She checked with her infomorph crews and got status updates sent to her AR irises, and then turned back to the hologlobe. The markers indicating her fleet formed up around the Chevalier within a few thousand kilometers, heading on the same vector.

Strike Seven Delta was a small, fast-reaction taskforce, a component of the larger XCOM Direct Action division's Strike Seven fleet. She had two three-hundred meter _Myrmidon_-class escort destroyers, a quartet of lighter one-hundred-fifty meter _Gladius_-class frigates (sisters to the _Gettysburg_), and a five-hundred meter-long _Longbow_-class guided-lance cruiser. There was little variation in the design between the smaller ships; they were built like the old Firestorms from the Ethereal War, a dark blue-gray hull shaped vaguely like a teardrop, wider and rounded in the rear and narrowing to a hook-like point at the front. The XCOM emblem and motto were emblazoned along the "wings" extending amidships, making the craft resemble long, silvery swords. Their aft ends glowed with their thrusters, and their plasma and laser batteries burned with green and red fire. The hatches for the four recessed fusion lance batteries on the Longbow were hard to spot on the display.

All were dwarfed by the kilometer-long _Chevalier_. The _Halberd_-class carrier was much larger and more cylindrical in shape, its launch bays closed tight until they were ready to deploy. Unlike the combat craft, the _Chevalier_ carried limited direct-fire weapons. Almost all of its interior space was given over to the hundreds of fighters and drones and two battalions of XCOM soldiers it carried. Like the smaller craft, her aft end was rounded and glowed from the quartet of thrusters that propelled the massive warship.

It was _significantly_ more firepower than what the enemy had faced a few hours ago at the Hoc system.

As navigation synched up their paths and Strike Seven Delta's informophs and VIs traded data, Dolvich checked the wormhole array and the fleet surrounding it. The wormhole defense fleet consisted of more than seventy ships, mostly cruisers and frigates but with two light carriers matching _Chevalier's_ size to support them. They were a mix of PPA, EU, and SDC ships, with an additional force of about ten Jovian frigates. Anything larger than the carriers simply wouldn't fit through the wormhole arrays.

She wished she could call on the full firepower of that defense fleet for help, but Dolvich knew she did not have any authority over them, and they had a crucial job themselves. Their official mission was to defend the wormhole entry; after all, if the wormhole fell, then every colony in the cluster would be cut off. Their unofficial mission was to keep an eye on each other, for that exact same reason. No one wanted their colonies held hostage in case of a diplomatic crisis, which was one of the reasons why the arrays were actually handled by a third party: built and operated by Armacham Technology Corporation crew and protected internally by an XCOM team.

Her eyes then drifted to the two devices that made up that critical link. The Prothean mass relay, a massive, two-pronged blade of dark blue quantum-locked metal and alien construction with a massive element zero core at its heart, and the more utilitarian wormhole array latticework built a couple of kilometers in front of the tips of the blades, where ships went when they were "launched" by the relay.

The wormhole array was a two kilometer long and one and a half-kilometer wide and tall egg-shaped lattice of vahlenite, constructed of twenty-meter-wide struts. The end of the lattice pointing toward the mass relay was open, and around its equator were a regular series of fifty-meter-wide spheres and cylindrical thruster modules that kept the array in station-keeping position with the relay. Dolvich thought she could see the strange, pitch-black gap in space-time that was the wormhole entry, a spot where no emissions of any kind passed through. Her suspicions were confirmed when she abruptly began detecting emissions from where the hole was situated, indicating the array's Armacham crew had shut it down.

She didn't really know the physics behind how the wormhole array operated. When she'd asked about the questionable sanity regarding building a structure on the business end of the mass relay, the scientist in question had explained that the "mass-free" corridors the relays created allowed whatever they were transporting to pass through solid matter. Otherwise every ship using them would run the risk of striking a micrometeorite while traversing the interstellar distances and getting reduced to free atoms. How the mass relay achieved this was largely unknown, a fact that still perturbed much of the human scientific community - as well as anyone worried about strategic issues. No one wanted their interstellar options limited by the functional relics of a long-dead civilization.

The array itself was equally mystifying, though for other reasons. Dolvich was not Gifted, and thus lacked psionics, which was an integral part of most Ethereal-derived technology. The arrays used the same wormhole technology the Ethereals had used to move their Temple Ship and lesser craft around, though they were somehow amplified by the mass relays. The short version Dolvich had learned in astrophysics classes at the XCOM Naval Academy over Saturn had explained it as using the mass relay to form the corridors between wormhole entrances and exits, even between relays that didn't connect, like Arcturus and Sentry Omega. Effectively, they were using Ethereal tech to co-opt two relays into linking together in ways they didn't normally.

It was still a crude technology. Aside from the issue with ships appearing at random locations within a few light-seconds from the wormhole, there were side effects to passing through the gates. Most people only experienced nausea, though some had more severe reactions. In a few cases there had been cardiac arrests or seizures. Dolvich had read reports of psychological effects as well, including anxiety attacks, insomnia, depression, and a few cases of schizophrenia or dementia. XCOM regularly ran physical and psychological exams on anyone who used the wormholes.

But instability was a given with Ethereal and psionic technology, even XCOM-developed tech, let alone something that XCOM had joint-developed with help from a profit-focused hypercorp like Armacham Technology. There was still so much about the aliens and their psionic technology that humanity didn't fully understand. The Jovians in particular were ferocious in their criticism of a reliance on technology that was yet to be completely researched and comprehended.

Dolvich's AR display showed shift in fleet disposition, which shook her out of that line of thought. A flick of a finger and a focus on the data plots showed a formation of PPA ships peeling off from the defense fleet. She counted eight ships, most of them frigates, but backed by a trio of heavy cruisers, the lead ship identified as the USNA Potomac. A moment later, five Jovian Space Force frigates - half their deployed force - joined them, headed by _JSF Phalanx._ Markers on her display indicated the ship commanders patching into their channel.

_"Gentlemen,"_ she messaged. _"You have all received the initial briefings. Judging by the data dumps from our fallen comrades in the Hoc system, we are facing a new enemy with technology specifically designed to counter ours. Last reports indicated hundreds to thousands of people left on the surface of Lincoln during the evacuation who could not egocast out or left active egos on the surface._

_"Our mission is simple. I've always preferred it that way."_ She clenched her fist as she sent that. Fuck the rampant politics that dominated humanity these days. XCOM was always stuck between the political bullshit of half a dozen conflicting alliances.

_"We will transition to the Hoc system, reconnoiter the situation, determine the enemy presence in our system, and whether there are any survivors."_

She leaned forward, a snarl escaping her lips that she knew would be carried as part of the message to the other captains.

_"Then we kill every last one of these bastards."_

Acknowledgements came back almost immediately, along with more than a few strong words of agreement.

"All ships report matching vectors," messaged Lieutenant Kilociv. The infomorph's avatar lit up in the holotank next to Dolvich's chair, alongside Chi's representation. "Transit time calculated. Our course will put us directly in Hoc's Kuiper Belt-equvalent. Estimated transit time… eighteen hours."

"Excellent," Dolvich replied. "Send the countdown."

* * *

Major Jack Harper took his seat at the front of the briefing bay connected to the _Chevalier's_ main troop launching bay, where the one thousand, six-hundred-odd troops of the two XCOM battalions would launch. Assuming they were able to win in space; otherwise they'd be stuck on the carrier until it was time to retreat. Considering what he'd downloaded and reviewed from the command deck, the enemy were a formidable force. He'd spent a dozen subjective hours in simulspace going over the data, and he planned to get back to it shortly after the briefing. The first alien contact in eighty years was too fascinating an opportunity to pass up on.

The rest of the briefing room was filled with the officers of the two XCOM battalions: platoon commanders, company captains, non-commissioned officers, and Major Magrabi of Second Battalion. Being XCOM, they were an eclectic force assembled from every nation and alliance on Earth and beyond. More than a few were no longer wearing the bodies they had been born with, having either died in accidents or combat or simply resleeving into bodies that were gene-modded or mech-augmented for military work. Harper himself had sleeved into a gene-mod body designed for rapid tactical and strategic analysis, which helped boost his own considerable skills. And like Harper, they all wore the regulation XCOM olive green spacesuits.

Colonel Benito Canales took a position at the front of the bay, before the holotanks used to display entire urban environments or planets. He was a towering figure, his current body largely mechanical and designed for fitting into heavy MEC battlesuits. His face was weathered and battered from decades of active service. XCOM didn't see as much service as some of the allied militaries, but they were the ones that were called in for independent colonial police actions, psionic policing, pirate hunting, and mediation when a confrontation happened between powers, and had seen their fair share of unrest and violence.

"Officers," Canales boomed as they took their seats. He didn't bother explaining the situation; everyone had already received reports from the command deck and had reviewed them in simulspace.

"We have sixteen hours before we reach Hoc. Upon arrival our objectives will be search and rescue of surviving egos on the ground at Lincoln and aboard Hallis' orbital habitats, as well as neutralization of any alien presence on the ground and seizure of alien technology. You've all received maps from the PPA on the Lincoln colony layout, and the Jovians have actually coughed up the schematics for their habs and hydrogen scoops.

"Evacuation teams report that one thousand, two hundred eighty-six unique egos were left behind on the surface when the aliens entered orbit and cut off evacuation," Canales continued. "It is unknown how many Jovians may have been left behind at Hallis. They reported everyone safely evacuated, but someone always slips through the cracks, so we still need to be certain. Obviously, our objectives will likely change once we have a better understanding of enemy disposition and can confirm if there are any survivors. If we have a major enemy presence on the ground, we may have to abort ground ops until the ships clear out enemy concentrations."

Harper nodded. They might have been sixteen-hundred of the best, most well-armed and trained human soldiers, augmented by MECs and some of the best psionics in human space, but they were just two battalions. They would have a difficult experience fighting a division-strength force. The fact that none of the other human forces had sent anything larger than a heavy cruiser to support them also meant XCOM was supplying the balance of the ground component. They could expect a couple of PPA companies and maybe a couple of Jovian platoons.

Canales waved a hand, bringing up a holographic display of showing data feeds from the destroyed frigates and orbital stations.

"If their infantry technology is comparable to their space tech, then we will be facing an enemy who is particularly specialized to defeat our best weapons. Their ships can generate some form of mass effect-based kinetic barrier. It renders plasma weapons completely ineffective and is also capable of deflecting kinetic weapons. Lasers can bypass these defenses, however. If this holds true to their ground forces, our plasma weapons will experience reduced performance. We will likely need to go in lighter than usual."

There were a couple of chuckles, and Canales frowned for a moment before nodding in acknowledgement of his unintentional pun.

"I've worked with our infolife crewmen and Majors Harper and Magrabi in simulspace to come up with some ideas on what we might be up against. I've assembled a few dozen possible scenarios and force compositions. I want you to take your people through these scenarios to get them acclimated to what we might be fighting down there. With luck, we might have come up with something that vaguely matches actual enemy capabilities."

Some more chuckles, though now they sounded a bit more uncertain. Harper didn't blame them. He could see the anxiety on the officers' faces, concealed though it was. Even Canales, augmented as he was, covered up a hidden reserve of uncertainty.

That was Harper's specialty: evaluation, study, understanding. It was why he'd requested specific mods to improve his mental capacity, to capitalize on the strengths of his ego. It was why he'd risen through XCOM's ranks as quickly as he had.

And it was the reason why, unlike his fellows, he wasn't worried or anxious about what they might find. Humanity would triumph; it was what humans did. He wanted to see what technologies these aliens had, to learn of them, take their knowledge, and see what else could be done with it. That was how humanity had achieved so much in the last eighty years.

"After that, I want everyone to catch some rack time, even if its sleep pods," Canales continued. "The whole strike force should be well rested by the time we hit the edge of the Hoc system. Bring any concerns to me before then. Dismissed."

* * *

**PRIORITY ONE HYPERWAVE TRANSMISSION: PRIORITY ALPHA CHANNEL**

**TIMESTAMP: 0731 HOURS ZULU STANDARD TIME, 21/8/2103**

**FROM: STRIKE TASKFORCE SEVEN, DELTA SQUADRON, REAR ADMIRAL ELENA DOLVICH, XCS CHEVALIER**

**TO: XCOM TASKFORCE SEVEN CENTRAL COMMAND**

Strike Seven Delta and allied fleets have arrived in the Hoc system in response to CASE BLOODY JESTER alert by _XCS Gettysburg._ Preliminary recon has been initiated from Kuiper Belt equivalent. Wreckage of XCOM, PPA, and JSF ships confirmed. No survivors present. Hyperwave assessment of wreckage confirms unknown enemy has salvaged most of the remains of the destroyed ships.

Hyperwave scanning from the edge of the system has confirmed the presence of hostile alien ships in orbit over Lincoln and other planets. Technical data is attached. Status of colony is unknown at this time. No transmissions have been received from surface. Long-range visual scans at two, four, and six-light hour ranges indicate alien movement on surface. Hyperwave scanning of hostile force and colony remains inconclusive on hostile numbers or status of colonists.

Strike Seven Delta is preparing to engage hostiles.

**END TRANSMISSION**

* * *

Admiral Dolvich leaned over her CIC's hologlobe, AR displays feeding her a wealth of data. She read the incoming information with a ravenous hunger as her hyperwave scanners sent real-time readouts from the Hoc system's primary worlds. Equal amounts of trepidation and anticipation worked through her, the former because the enemy had reinforced the system with additional ships that could threaten her task force, and the latter because they had done the same and thus she could kill more of them.

Unsurprisingly, the aliens had a significant presence over Lincoln itself. Hyperwave counted thirteen frigate-tonnage vessels and four cruiser-tonnage ships orbiting the garden world, with half those ships in rough station-keeping over the colony capital. Half a dozen more frigates were patrolling over Hallis, and she counted a single frigate orbiting over the other three planets in the system. There seemed to be a little bit of activity over the third planet, which - according to the survey records Dolvich brought up - was considered a possible mining target, but the atmospheric conditions - severe heat and pressure - rendered it unfeasible for a startup colony. Maybe the aliens were more tolerant of the conditions.

Dolvich focused again on the alien craft. She had viewed hours of combat footage already, but these unpressured, long-range observations of enemy operations revealed interesting aspects of the enemy's operations. For example, she could see that the aliens' frigates were actually periodically descending into the atmosphere to deploy what looked like armored troop pods into Lincoln's capital city, Mariana. Considering power generation profiles, element zero mass, and gravitational readings from the ships, it indicated that they were using mass effect fields to allow their spacecraft casual atmospheric movement, something humanity still hadn't perfected; they still relied on the power supplied by elerium for achieving brute-force escape velocity and vahlenite hulls to withstand the harsh fury of reentry. That meant the enemy possessed a worrying sophistication regarding mass effect technology.

In addition, the enemy outnumbered the human fleet slightly, at least in absolute numbers. And mass effect faster-than-light drives meant that the enemy could easily concentrate force from across the system the moment they detected a threat. Their shields and hulls meant they had the advantage in a battle of attrition.

The solution came to her almost immediately.

Dolvich leaned back in her chair and contacted the other ship captains, as well as his fighter commanders.

_"Gentlemen,"_ she messaged as soon as everyone was connected to her channel, and proceeded with her usual bluntness. _"We move to attack within the hour. Against this enemy, we will be destroyed at long range. Therefore, we engage with maximum speed and violence at minimal range."_

_"Point blank annihilation,"_ one of the PPA captains messaged back, with grim approval, which was echoed by the others on all sides. Dolvich sent her own agreement.

_"This mission has been codenamed Operation: LIGHTNING KING. An initial force will attack at Hallis. Jovian and XCOM frigates will wormhole into close proximity with each alien ship and destroy them quickly with close-range fire. What happens next will depend on the enemy's reaction. If they attack our frigates at Hallis with their force over Lincoln, we will drop our entire remaining force, including our cruisers, fighters, and gunships, directly on top of them."_ She highlighted Lincoln. _"If the enemy does not react to our force at Lincoln, we will regroup and deploy our entire force to hit them there. Once Lincoln's airspace is clear, then we will commence ground operations."_

_"And if the enemy doesn't play to your tune, Admiral?"_ asked one of the Jovian captains - a Captain Hamak of the _JSF Unyielding._ Dolvich frowned in annoyance at the implication in his words and the not-so-subtle challenge. Standard Jovian independent bravado, but still unacceptable.

She shrugged, transmitting that dismissal across the channel, and continued with her message. Confidence was better than an open rebuke.

_"Then we improvise,"_ she replied. "_We are the best spacers and soldiers in the galaxy. We will adapt and overcome, should the enemy not be gracious enough to die for us in the first place."_ She paused, checking readiness reports for a moment, and then continued. _"We initiate in thirty minutes. Make final preparations."_

She closed the channel, then immediately opened one to Captain Hamak, and was gracious enough to wait for him to acknowledge her.

_"Captain, do not question my authority in a combat zone again,"_ she messaged.

_"Someone had to point out the hole in your plan, Admiral,"_ the Captain replied almost immediately.

_"Perhaps I was unclear. I apologize for the misconception,"_ Dolvich replied. _"Allow me to make matters more apparent: The next time you question my authority in a combat zone, you will wake up in an XCOM holding cell. Does that clarify the situation?"_

Several seconds passed. XCOM's charter and the mutual defense treaties signed in regards to potential alien attack gave her that exact legal capability, and the Jovians knew it.

_"Understood, ma'am,"_ Hamak finally replied.

_"Excellent. Maintain your bravado and anger for our mutual enemy. We face the greatest threat to our existence since the Ethereal War, Captain. If we do not stand together, we will die."_

_"Yes ma'am."_

_"Prepare your ship, Captain Hamak. In twenty-nine minutes, we unleash humanity."_

* * *

Captain Davis Chi watched with anxious helplessness as the fleet maneuvered into position to launch Operation: LIGHTNING KING. The sensations associated with being an infomorph were strange. Instead of gripping his command chair, his tactile senses were on the heartbeat of the Chevalier's thrumming data pathways. His hearing reported not only audio but the constant pulse of data and millions of passing bits of information threading through the carrier's system in a sandstorm of individual packets. He could read and comprehend the raw data coming in from the sensors, thanks to his rank and position as Admiral Dolvich's advisor.

He saw the moment the Jovian and XCOM ships launched their attack, and through hyperwave observations, he could track their assault in real-time.

The aliens were following broadly predictable patrol patterns. There was enough random movement in their patterns that a long-range shot from a kinetic weapon would not be accurate, but the pattern was not erratic enough to throw off the wormhole calculations.

Eleven human frigates - five Jovian and six XCOM - burst through wormholes in a torrent of emissions and purple light, and opened fire. Their deployment was needle-precise on the scale of battling spacecraft, dropping to within a few dozen kilometers of their targets, well within range to engage with lasers at minimal diffusion.

Chi had witnessed the enemy's reaction to a wormhole flanking maneuver firsthand, but that had been in the thick of the battle, with a heart pounding and adrenaline pumping. From a distance, with the simulated neural architecture of an infomorph body negating the impact of biochemistry, he could see the battle from a new perspective, and he found himself startled at the reaction time of the enemy.

Or more specifically, the total lack of any reaction time at all. The alien ships were maneuvering around to open fire on the Jovian and XCOM ships before they had barely started to clear the wormholes, responding to the sudden assault with speed that spoke of an observe-orient-decide-act loop that spanned milliseconds.

Lasers slashed back and forth in sudden barrages of rapid-fire violence, the aliens opening up only a second after the human craft. That second was telling, however, when the weapons moved at light speed. Even with their absurdly-fast reaction times, the aliens still had to pivot and bring their weapons to bear, and the human weapons hammered them with a lethality that was equal parts furious vengeance and cold, preprogrammed firing solutions.

By the time the enemy started returning fire, three of their frigates were being cored with lasers, mass accelerators, and plasma fire - the latter once the enemy's kinetic barriers had collapsed. The others, through luck or design, had managed to evade at least some of the humans' fire and were dodging evasively, point-defense lasers and mass accelerators pummeling away at the human craft. Their movements and fire were precise and deadly, something Chi recognized from the lengthy defense over Hallis. They ruthlessly assaulted damaged hull sections and within seconds one Jovian frigate was belching debris and flame from its port flank, and an XCOM frigate was breaking off into an evasive pattern, engines flickering.

But the mauling the humans received was handed back manyfold. The remaining aliens' ships were rapidly overwhelmed, their hulls slashed open and interiors set ablaze by heavy plasma fire. Chi wondered if the Admiral was going to make an attempt at capture, but as he watched the ruthless assault, he doubted that. Capture and analysis could come later; the current objective was retaliation and retaking their system, and any intelligence collected from the enemy's ruined corpses was a bonus.

However, this assault was enlightening, judging by what he could "hear" from the excited back-and-forth chatter among the intelligence officers and their infomorph equals. They gathered reams of data from the seconds-long engagement, and he knew much of that data was being fed into infomorph and VI personnel operating in speed-up simulspace environments to rapidly analyze what they were seeing.

Chi's electronic senses told him that some activity was coming from the hyperwave sensors targeting Lincoln, and he shifted his focus toward them. It was an odd sensation; he could still observe the battle over Hallis as it was rapidly concluding, but he could also observe Lincoln in turn, receiving both sets of data at the same time on top of his awareness of the activity within Chevalier's data network.

The alien fleet over the tropical garden world was pivoting in place, and the hyperwave reported energy spikes and blue-shifting light, and a quick check of their apparent heading indicated they were pointing toward Hallis. Chi immediately pinged Admiral Dolvich with a quick message warning her that the aliens were about to jump.

_"Finally,"_ she messaged back, eagerness coloring her words. Chi then caught the outbound signal she sent to their bait ships. It was the random code string indicating they were about to be attacked, and the frigates reacted quickly, retreating back into the shadow of the gas giant, putting it between themselves and the distant garden world. Wormhole gates formed before the two critically-damaged frigates, and they escaped into the gaps in spacetime, retreating to the edge of the system at a predetermined rally point. Their escape occurred mere seconds before simultaneous bursts of high-frequency radiation marked the main alien fleet jumping from Lincoln to Hallis.

They emerged over the north pole of Hallis, twenty near-simultaneous bursts of blue-shifted radiation. Every remaining ship in the alien fleet: sixteen frigates and four cruisers, spread over a thousand kilometers, and accelerating toward the battered human frigates.

_"Draw them in,"_ Dolvich ordered. _"Launch strike craft. Allied ships, prepare to execute wormgate jump on my command."_

The bays on the kilometer-long carrier slid open, exposing the hatches of armored launch tubes. The craft in the tubes had already been loaded well before the fleet had arrived in the Hoc system, and upon arrival the pilots had boarded their ships and gone through launch preparations. The moment Operation: LIGHTNING KING was initiated, the strike craft were sealed and the launch tubes were cleared of oxygen.

Within seconds of the launch order, a river of hurtling spacecraft and brilliant blue-white drive flares poured off the _Chevalier_, orienting toward the distant gas giant. The strike craft were a mixture of different types: small, fast-moving FAFNIR attack drones, larger manned Inferno interceptors, and heavily-armed Avenger assault gunships.

_"Frigates and cruisers, focus fire on enemy cruisers."_ Dolvich ordered. _"Lance authorization. Strike craft, wormhole in fifteen seconds after the capital ships and assault the frigates at point-blank."_

The coded execution string went out, and gates abruptly formed in a torrent of psychic energy before the warships, and they plunged into the openings.

Over Hallis, the aliens were spreading out, accelerating toward the nine human frigates while maneuvering into a roughly dome-shaped formation that would allow them to concentrate fire from multiple angles while avoiding each other. The human frigates were attempting to keep clear of the enemy formation's teeth, but the aliens were repositioning with that amazing speed and precision. The good news was that, so far, the aliens hadn't managed to hit any of the frigates, though not for a lack of enthusiastic effort.

Then the wormholes opened behind them at less than one thousand kilometers, and their formation started shifting even before the wave of warships appeared. Chi thought he saw a moment of hesitation when the PPA heavy cruisers came boiling out of the portals surrounding their formation. Whether it was surprise, indecision, or simply the OODA loop reacting to the unexpected arrival of so much firepower was unclear, but it lasted only a moment. The dome formation changed within seconds, the aliens whirling around, frigates accelerating to cover the cruisers left exposed by the reinforcements.

But the few seconds it took to change course gave the human cruisers time to target and fire their lances before the mass accelerator fire started criss-crossing between the two fleets. The fusion lance missiles launched from tubes amidships on the cruisers, screaming toward the alien ships. The raw firepower of the fusion warheads, based on the small but violently powerful energy generation systems of the Ethereal warships, would have been enough to annihilate any human ship they struck. Every cruiser, both the three PPA ships and the XCOM vessel, emptied their loaded tubes, unleashing twenty-four lances. Golden streaks screamed toward the aliens.

Forty kilometers from the alien ships, laser beams cut through the missiles with unerring precision. Every lance missile was blasted apart in puffs of vaporized metal.

_"Solid point defense,"_ Dolvich messaged, the words colored by curiosity and frustration. Chi agreed, though by now he was no longer surprised at the speed of enemy reactions.

Kinetic weapons slashed back and forth as the lance batteries reloaded, the outnumbered aliens redeploying their frigates to shield the cruisers, while the heavier ships poured fire into the unshielded human warships. PPA and XCOM ships kept moving, advancing to close range, while the Jovian and XCOM bait ships charged toward the rear of the alien formation. Lasers began to open fire as they reached effective range.

Then another torrent of energy erupted as lines of portals opened in front of the hundreds of strike craft still gathered off the _Chevalier's_ bow. Unlike the warships, the fighters didn't carry Durand-Vahlen Spatial Transition drives; It was impractical due to the bulk of the drives and the relative scarcity of psionics to begin with. Instead, the psionic wormhole operators on the Chevalier charged and activated specialized DV drives, creating gaping holes in spacetime before the strike craft.

There was no way the aliens could miss the blasts of emissions. They reacted immediately, once again shifting their formations, frigates forming around their cruisers, but they were already deployed to fight the human warships and would not be able to completely redeploy in time. The strike craft poured through the wormholes and fell upon the enemy, a swarm of FAFNIR drones in the lead.

The FAFNIRs were space superiority drones based off the original airborne SHIV designs from the end of the Ethereal War. They were disc-shaped spacecraft about five meters in diameter, with glowing blue thruster modules at their aft ends and a single energy weapon mounted on their hulls. Most were outfitted with lasers, refitted from their standard plasma loadout during the eighteen hour trip from the Sentry Omega relay. There were over two hundred of the drones, swarming through the space between the gates and the enemy in juking, dodging cloud.

And at forty kilometers out from their targets, just before their were in range to fire, sixty-four of the FAFNIRs were blown to pieces by enemy lasers.

The aliens' point defense network was ruthless and deadly-precise, as with nearly everything else they did. Every point-defense laser on the alien ships opened fire and killed a FAFNIR drone. The rest of the drones poured through the point defense fire, weaving and dodging, and opened fire. Beams criss-crossed, the VIs auto-prioritizing enemy point defense and blasting away at their cannons even as the weapons cycles and fired again. Fifty-nine FAFNIRs were blasted out of space in that barrage.

More than half their drones were gone in the span of seconds. It was a sobering sight.

The chatter from the intelligence analysts, both organic, and infolife, increased several times over, with calculations flying past as they tried to figure out how that lethal point defense worked.

_"Strike craft, abort strafing runs,"_ Dolvich messaged. _"Cruisers, hold fusion lances. Strike craft, launch two Hydras each. Put that point defense to the test."_

The ninety Inferno fighters and fifty-six Avenger gunships broke off outside the probable effective range of the aliens' point defense, a twisting and chaotic mass of nearly one hundred and fifty pulsing drive flares as they tried to get out of the lethal range of the enemy point-defense. Heavier and outfitted with powerful thrusters, they were better-armed and tougher than the expendable assault drones, but they paid for it with reduced maneuverability. Both types resembled the original Firestorms, with the Infernos being mostly upgraded versions of the old fighter design and Avengers being elongated and covered in heavier armor and multiple weapon turrets.

They came about, retreating toward the oncoming human cruisers and frigates, which were already laying down kinetic shots and laser fire upon the aliens. The aliens' frigates surged forward, screening their cruisers while slaughtering more of the FAFNIRS. Vaporized hull streamed off the wounded ships, but they advanced without regard for the damage they were taking.

The strike craft managed to get clear of the killing zone, and whipped around. At almost the same time, they unloaded their Hydra missile racks. The Infernos carried four Hydra missiles, while the Avengers carried ten. Based off the micromissiles carried by the Sectopod war machines the Ethereals had used, each carried five anti-ship submunitions. Each fighter launched a pair of Hydras, which split apart halfway toward their target. Each individual minution was miniscule in actual firepower.

But there were nearly fifteen hundred of them.

The alien point-defense was nearly finished with the FAFNIRs when the tidal wave of missiles poured in. Chi hoped to see something resembling panic or fear from the aliens, but instead he witnessed them reorient, their point defense weapons arraying to cover all directions, and their lasers began blasting through the oncoming missiles. The submunitions were small enough that a mere passing slash with one of the beams was enough to blow it apart in a glowing cloud of vapor, and a single laser pulse knocked out three or four per shot.

Ultimately, that meant that the aliens were able to shoot down about a third of the incoming missiles, leaving a thousand to hammer home.

The aliens' shields took the brunt of the tidal wave of missiles, the projectiles hammering the barriers and exploding harmlessly against the defenses. Even with the fire they had taken from the FAFNIR drones and the capital ships, the shields absorbed nearly ninety percent of the incoming missiles. That still left a hundred-odd munitions to pour through the collapsed barriers and slam into the alien ships. The frigates were the primary targets, and the missiles struck home with deadly effect, blowing apart hunks of hull plating and sending fiery plumes spraying into the void.

_"Damnation,"_ Dolvich hissed aloud, and Chi saw what she meant. Though the aliens were bleeding, some badly, most of their ships were still firing and maneuvering.

_"Avengers, two more Hydras, Infernos, one. Cruisers, lance them again. Wipe them out."_

* * *

Elena Dolvich watched the battle, but kept her augmented reality feeds open to the data coming in from the rest of the system. While she had to focus on the battle, she knew that keeping her eyes too closely locked on the enemy could be disastrous. If there was one thing that they had learned from the Ethereal War - and every war mankind had fought before and since among itself - it was that the moment you thought you were winning was the moment things went to hell.

On the data plot in the _Chevalier's_ local area, one of the infomorphs monitoring the sensors highlighted an emission burst four light seconds out. An eyeblink later, Dolvich received a message from Chi.

_"That matches the profile of the probe that we saw the day before the aliens attacked, Admiral,"_ he sent, and he didn't hide the alarm that came with those words.

Damn.

Dolvich checked how long they were spotting the contact, and her blood ran cold when she realized it was still there four seconds after they'd detected it.

She began issuing orders.

_"Navigation, get us the hell out here,"_ she messaged. _"Charge the DV drive. I don't care where, just get us at least a light-minute clear of our position."_

The enemy had backtracked _Chevalier_, and had a probe in place long enough spot the carrier. How didn't matter - maybe they could backtrack the wormholes or hyperwave transmissions. The scientists and analysts could figure that one out.

Right now, they had to move quickly. If there was one thing that the last couple of minutes of battle had made abundantly clear, it was that the aliens thought and reacted with blinding speed, which meant-

Cherenkov bursts erupted fifty thousand kilometers away from the carrier. The emissions profiles immediately resolved into four more of the alien cruisers, escorted by seven frigates, and more than eighty strike craft. An instant later, sensors were picking up incoming fire.

And an instant after that, the network security infomorphs reported electronic intrusions across the carrier's systems, including an abrupt power surge and reboot of the navigation computers and governors for both the DV drive and mass effect field generators.

A reserve fleet and sophisticated electronic warfare, likely improved by analyzing human computer networks.

_And there it is,_ Dolvich thought to herself, nodding, and began issuing orders. _What I didn't plan for._

* * *

Though the humans did not understand precisely how the laser point defense systems on the alien ships operated, Dolvich's orders to saturate their point defense with another barrage of Hydras and fusion lances simultaneously was a deathblow. The intense firing of the lasers, coupled with the heat buildup from the equally intense fighting, resulted in a significant reduction in efficiency and accuracy.

When the juking and weaving fighters launched and the Hydra submunitions poured in, the lasers were able to swat the majority of them out of space. At the same time, when the cruisers launched their second wave of fusion lance missiles, the shining golden spears were immediately targeted and fired upon, and the aliens defeated most of those as well.

Ninety-two Hydra submunitions made it through the defensive fire and shields, while only five of the twenty four fusion lances struck their targets, two to one cruiser and one to each of the others.

The lance missiles were a combination of Ethereal power and efficiency taken to deadly effectiveness due to human ingenuity. When they hit, they penetrated the vahlenite hulls of the alien craft and plunged deep into their hearts. White-hot annihilation exploded out, vaporizing machinery, plating, and hulls in a sudden sphere of nuclear fury. The cruisers were utterly shattered by the detonations, their remains hurled away with such speed that two of their own frigates were impaled by the debris, one exploding from the shrapnel ripping through its hull and the other shattered into multiple tumbling pieces.

The human ships closed in, many battered and wounded but all with deadly intent. They began firing on the wounded enemy frigates, hounds falling upon a stumbling prey. The battle was all but decided.

Then the surviving frigates abruptly swung around on a course pointed away from the system. Flashes of blue-shifted emissions suddenly eclipsed the alien ships, and then they vanished.

The captains of the PPA, Jovian, and XCOM ships barely had time to register the sudden disappearance of the enemy when the emergency hyperwave from the _Chevalier_ reached them.

* * *

The _Chevalier_ peeled away from the oncoming alien ships, her crew counting the seconds as the engineering team scrambled to get any of their FTL systems functioning again. It would take precious moments for reinforcements to return; the capital ships would need to calculate another wormhole vector and charge their DV transition drives again. The strike craft, too small to mount their own wormhole systems, would need to wait until _Chevalier's_ specialized wormholes were reactivated to jump back.

With the situation as grim as it was, Dolvich sent immediate orders to transmit final ego backups and for the soldiers on the ship to board their transports. If the carrier went down, then the Voidrangers could get the survivors off the ship and to safety.

Plasma, laser, and kinetic shots lanced out into space toward the oncoming projectiles as the Inferno combat-space-patrol and _Chevalier's_ own point defense opened fire, and several flares of light and heat marked intercepted munitions.

Then the projectiles hammered the carrier, two direct hits that struck the carrier's aft end, plowing through armor. Damage reports flashed through Dolvich's skull as the ship slewed violently from the impacts. Several aft decks penetrated. Two body deaths among the crew. One of the munitions stores penetrated - no detonations, thank God. Minimal damage to carrier power generation and hull integrity.

Damned lucky. The carrier's sheer size and vahlenite construction had prevented the enemy rounds from penetrating any further.

Alien strike craft were swooping in as the carrier lurched and changed course. Thermal profile showed them as resembling the wasp-like structure of the other alien warships, although with fatter "thorax" sections and large, prominent weapons systems housed in what looked like gimbal mounts. The Infernos were already maneuvering to intercept, but the two fighter flights only amounted to eight ships.

Those eight Infernos were loaded with four Hydras apiece, and they each launched two missiles at the oncoming enemy fighters. The aliens responded with sudden flashes of laser and kinetic weapons fire, the ships juking and twisting in violent, nearly impossible maneuvers. They shifted course at vicious right angles and accelerated at speeds that would have knocked any organic pilot unconscious, all the while gimbal-mounted weapons tracked and opened fire on the incoming missiles. Hydra submunitions exploded in the vacuum among the weaving and dodging alien craft. Despite their desperate evasive maneuvers, more than a dozen of the alien strike craft were struck and blasted out of space by the missiles.

_"Kinetic mass effect barrier strength scales with ship size,"_ one of the analysis infomorphs remarked to Dolvich. _"Plasma may have some effect on their fighters."_

Dolvich ignored the message, focusing on keeping her carrier alive.

Then the Infernos were upon the aliens while they were dodging the missiles, firing their lasers and their own gimbal-mounted kinetic weapons. They were terribly outnumbered, but their pilots' egos were already backed up and they charged straight into the enemy's teeth, their own ships maneuvering with startling grace and precision thanks to their own onboard electronics - which were modern evolutions of the old evasion and targeting modules that had been built out of alien cybernetic implants during the Ethereal War. Lines of deadly mass accelerator fire and burning laser beams seared between the fighters, and for a few moments, the Infernos held their own, burning the alien ships out of space while the enemy tried to escape the remaining Hydras. They reaped a terrible toll upon the enemy, knocking eighteen more fighters out of the sky within the first few seconds of contact, launching shining ribbons and superheated metal and exploding debris across the voice between the carrier and the alien fleet.

In fact, Dolvich noted, they were nearly as agile as the enemy fighters. Save for being forced to maneuver with the limitations of organic crewmen, they were nearly evenly matched. It was like the fighters were drones, or-

Or piloted by AI.

It clicked. In a single sudden realization, Dolvich realized what they were fighting. Absurd reaction speeds, apparent disregard for their own lives, highly-sophisticated electronic attacks.

The enemy wasn't organic. It was a networked AI lifeform of some kind.

She sent an immediate hyperwave alert to both her own ships and along with the intelligence data being hyperwaved out, for all the good it would do immediately. Enemy fire was still incoming, her fighter screen was desperately battling the enemy strike craft, and more than half of those were breaking off to attack the carrier. Dolvich braced herself as the tracks indicating enemy shots intersected the Chevalier.

The impact would have thrown her from her chair if she wasn't strapped in. As it was, the shots plowed through the carrier amidships, the smaller frigate munitions crumpling against _Chevalier's_ hull while the heavy cruiser rounds smashed through multiple decks. Casualty and damage reports flashed across Dolvich's awareness as their vital-tracker implants reported dozens of abrupt body deaths to the distributed networks. Fires erupted in aircraft maintenance compartments, launch bays, and crew sections, quickly stamped out by damage-control infomorphs where oxygen could be vented. Sections with physical crew would react more slowly, however, mostly because they had to evacuate wounded with compromised suits before the oxygen could be removed. Engine and reactor power were still close to maximum, thankfully, but an accurate penetrating shot could still hit their reactor.

Dolvich glanced at the clock. Less than ten seconds since the aliens had jumped in on top of them.

_"DV drive rebooted!"_ reported one of the engineers. _"Initializing psychic interface software! We need a few more seconds!"_

_"We can manage that,"_ Dolvich messaged with a grimace. _Chevalier_ was a tough bitch, but not invincible. Another round of fire was closing in, and the enemy strike craft were diving through the carrier's point defense weapons. The lasers and kinetic weapons sliced apart several of them, but the rest weaved and juked through the walls of lethal projectiles and light. They opened fire at close range, targeting the point guns and the breaches in the hull from previous impacts. Meanwhile the carrier's remaining fighter cover was tied down fighting the other half of the enemy strike craft fleet, and they were rapidly being cut down by sheer numbers.

Abrupt radiation emissions then flashed through space a few thousand kilometers from the alien fleet, and Dolvich's smile was grim and vicious.

"About time," she muttered.

The combined human fleet over Hallis emerged from a slew of wormholes in a ragged but aggressive formation, accelerating straight toward the alien fleet with weapons blazing. The aliens whirled to face them, abandoning their attack on the carrier to trade shots with the human fleet. As kinetic rounds screamed back and forth, Engineering messaged Dolvich again.

_"DV drive online! We can jump!"_

_"Negative,"_ she replied, and switched to the navigation and CAG channels. _"Bring our strike craft back to us. Infernos and FAFNIRs next to the carrier. Avengers with our fleet."_

It would take several seconds for the human fighters to reorient toward the wormhole coordinates. In that time, _Chevalier_ shook violently from multiple close-range impacts, shots penetrating deep into the carrier's breached hull. Further out, the human ships assaulted the alien reserve fleet with a fury, closing in and laying down kinetic fire. The aliens reaped a deadly tool, their weapons hammering the unshielded human warships. Multiple frigates were ablaze or flying out of control, gutted and powerless.

XCOM needed to understand how those kinetic barriers worked. Dolvich knew they couldn't keep fighting an enemy whose defenses rendered their most powerful weapons impotent. And their strike craft mounted their own FTL systems; some kind of miniaturized mass effect drive? That was something humanity could use to deadly effect, if they could figure out how to replicate it.

The wormholes opened again, and close to a hundred Infernos and a few surviving FAFNIRs erupted, falling upon the enemy fighters. With numerical superiority on their side, it was a vicious slaughter, even with the aliens instantly responding and turning toward the new threat. Further out, the Avengers joined the main fleet.

_"Hydras and lances,"_ Dolvich ordered. _"Empty the tubes."_

The torrent of missiles swept over the enemy, and their point defense responded. The Avengers emptied their racks of Hydras, and the aliens swatted many of the submunitions out of the sky. Lance missiles were intermixed with the Hydras, but the aliens saw them coming and prioritized the nuclear ordnance. Of the twenty-four lance missiles, only one made it through the enemy point defense, but that one lance annihilated a cruiser. The few hundred Hydras that made it through the point defense hammered the cruiser shields and gutted the frigates.

The human fleet closed in and relentlessly pounded the surviving aliens. With their shields weakened or collapsed, they finally brought their deadliest armaments to bear. Green plasma bolts exploded through space toward the alien warships, and the impact was catastrophic. Entire sections of hull were superheated and vaporized on impact. Superstructures deformed and melted under the barrage, with even their mighty vahlenite hulls unable to disperse direct contact with the human plasma weapons.

One cruiser detonated in a brilliant plume of fire, and another shattered amidships as the plasma tore it apart. The final remaining alien ship took several direct hits before abruptly vanishing in a burst of blue-shifted emissions as it accelerated to faster than light speeds, two severely-damaged frigates joining it a second later.

Silence fell across the Chevalier's bridge, until Admiral Dolvich began issuing orders.

_"All ships and fighters, begin search and rescue operations. Compile casualty and damage reports. Fighters, staggered rearmament. Begin repair work as soon as possible."_ She paused, looking over the debris fields from the remaining enemy ships, both over Hallis and here in deep space.

_"Colonel Canales, detail several platoons for salvage and boarding operations. The rest of your men should load up ground combat kit. We're not done here."_

* * *

**PRIORITY ONE HYPERWAVE TRANSMISSION: PRIORITY ALPHA CHANNEL**

**TIMESTAMP: 0935 HOURS ZULU STANDARD TIME, 21/8/2103**

**FROM: STRIKE TASKFORCE SEVEN, DELTA SQUADRON, REAR ADMIRAL ELENA DOLVICH, XCS CHEVALIER**

**TO: XCOM TASKFORCE SEVEN CENTRAL COMMAND**

Strike Deven Delta and allied forces have secured the orbital space of the Hoc system. Successful destruction of seven enemy cruiser-equivalents and twenty-eight frigate equivalents, as well as eighty strike craft. Current casualties are as follows: _XCS Waterloo, JSF Unyielding, JSF Breakthrough, USNA Ohio, USNA Memphis, USNA Tampico._ Attached body death list, permanent death list, and recovered cortical stack lists will follow.

Salvage of intact enemy components is underway.

Ground operations will begin within the next six hours to liberate Lincoln's population centers and Hallis' orbital habitats.

**END TRANSMISSION**

* * *

**Author's Notes: **You may have noticed I'm posting these chapters very quickly. That's because I had the prologue and first two chapters already written (and I posted them on Spacebattles a week early). So it might be a bit before we get to the next chapter, which will have some interesting revelations.

Also, regarding the electronic warfare attack (which has been argued on both here and SB), the geth work _very, very fast,_ (not to mention they _are_ computer code) and electronic attacks between ships are possible in Mass Effect canon. That's one of EDI's jobs. If EDI can do it, so can the geth.


	4. Three: Operation SWIFT CONUNDRUM

_**Chapter Three: Operation: SWIFT CONUNDRUM**_

* * *

**Research Report: Initial Findings Re: Alien Technology and Remains**

**Lead Researcher: Doctor Prokhor Zakharov, Head of Research, XCS Chevalier**

**Project Codename: "Flashlight"**

_It is unfortunate that little of our foe's technology survived the engagement, although I do appreciate the fact that our military required extreme means to defeat the enemy defenses. However, while none of the larger enemy ships survived the violence required to bring them down, the smaller ships were taken in sufficient condition that we could begin disassembly of crucial components._

_First, we must confirm that Rear Admiral Elena Dolvich's mid-battle theory was correct. The alien life form appears to be a distributed synthetic intelligence. We found not a single indication of organic life, beyond industrially-created organic compounds that were components of the ship's equipment. We did recover several damaged "bodies" of the alien's "crew" which appear to be remote-operated humanoid platforms or drones._

_Data recovery was limited at best. By design, it appears that the aliens damaged or wiped their own computer systems to prevent data capture by our forces. However, with some reconstruction we have managed to rebuild fragments of both computer data and audio files. Though the operating system and computer language are largely alien, we have managed to isolate what appear to be identification tags, made up of lengthy numerical designations and a single short, repeating code phrase. I do not know if this identifier code can be translated into something we can understand at this time, but we believe this may be what the species calls itself._

_However, the soldiers sent to salvage the remains of the ships refer to the alien platforms as "flashlight-heads" after the optical systems in their "head" sections. Until we have a better name for them, I would recommend we use the designator "Flashlight" for their platforms. History has shown us that no matter what silly name the men in the field come up with for the enemy, we invariably take their capabilities seriously, and treat our collective foes with utmost respect._

* * *

"When we get down there, I want to make one of those Flashlight heads into a hat."

Major Jack Harper scowled as he heard that line cross one of the squad feeds, delayed by a second or two as one of the infomorphs monitoring his battalion's comms flagged the transmission and bounced it his way. He cut into that communication line.

_"No trophies, Private,"_ he said, and that conversation died abruptly, in the manner that only a commissioned officer intruding into enlisted affairs could. _"The scientists will get jealous."_

A round of nervous chuckles came back, and Harper disconnected.

He turned his senses back outward, to the Voidranger that was descending into the atmosphere of Lincoln. The troopship shivered as it started into the edges of the atmosphere, its hull heating up at the tremendous speeds they were moving. Harper felt a faint twinge of nervousness, but he easily clamped it down; he'd been through close to a hundred Voidranger drops, most of them into friendly air but more than a couple into potentially hostile worlds.

This, however, was the first time he was dropping into a definitely hostile atmosphere.

He switched AR feeds to the reports from the HULU drones that had been dropped ahead of the Voidrangers into the atmosphere. Like the dropships, they were surrounded by an armored shell intended to protect them from entry heat and enemy fire. Unlike the Voidrangers, their armor was an ablative shell that burned off during entry, causing them to resemble meteorites. As an added precaution, the HULUs' ablative shells were constructed out of shaped metals generally matching those found in the system's asteroids, in case someone pointed a spectrometer at them to gauge their composition.

By now the drones had already reached the bottom of their descent and had started shedding the shells. The moment they were clear, they fired retro-rockets to slow their descent before activating sensory cloaks and vanishing. For a few dangerous moments, however, an observer would have noted the metallic skins and flexing squid-like tentacles of the drones while the rockets were engaged.

Thus, Harper was unsurprised when abrupt barrages of gunfire slashed up from part of Lincoln's capital city of Mariana and swatted more than two-thirds of the HULUs out of the sky. He watched the tracks of enemy fire, sensors trailing them back to positions on the ground. The volume of projectiles indicated rapid-fire mass accelerators putting up tens of thousands of rounds; even against vahlenite armor those would rend the hulls of the Voidrangers.

_"Flashlight AA,"_ he messaged, and bounced the points of origin. _"Request fire support."_

_"Acknowledged, Hades Actual,"_ came the response from one of Chevalier's infomorphs. _"Remain clear of fire corridor."_

The Voidrangers began to drift apart, getting clear of the projected lines of fire from the orbital fleet. It would take a couple of seconds to target the Flashlight positions, and during that time Harper brought up a sensor overlay of the city and reviewed it.

Mariana was a first-year garden-world colony city, which meant that everything had been focused on getting infrastructure set up for a massive influx of colonists from Earth. The first wave of colonists had just started coming in two months before the Flashlights had attacked, and they had been housed in complexes of mass-produced colony modules. Each was a blunt-edged rectangle ten meters long and half that wide and tall; with two or three linked together, they could provide a small but comfortable living or working space. Within the city they were built into "stacks" of modules three to four stories tall, in neat, orderly city blocks.

The colony had been established along a temperate beach at the middle northern latitudes where weather was ideal for space-to-surface operations. With the exception of towers for communications and a large central spaceport consisting of huge walled landing platforms, the city was broadly uniform in height and structural density. Smaller satellite communities had been set up here and there further inland, with one ocean platform twenty kilometers out at sea.

Orbital recon had identified enemy positions quickly once the human fleets had taken space. The Flashlights had used an entirely predictable and ruthlessly efficient method of controlling the city: they landed troop concentrations outside the city to cover the roads and mag-lev rails running to the outer communities and then advanced into Mariana. Orbital scans showed the remains of their landing positions and logistical bases, which had clearly been dismantled and moved into the city where the module stacks could cover them from the human ships in orbit, all in the timeframe between the aliens controlling space and losing it to the humans.

Harper tried to imagine the kind of organization and coordination it would take to disassemble an entire staging area and move it into a hostile city in half an hour. For a human army, simply getting them to stop offensive operations and grab anything but basic portable supplies in that timeframe would be a challenge. The Flashlights acted fast.

The city itself was partially shrouded in smoke and haze from the fighting over the last day, though it wasn't as intense as he might have expected in a fully contested urban assault. Harper had led troops into cities torn by rioting or civil strife before, and the destruction was far more extensive. And those ravaged cityscapes had been nothing compared to the widespread devastation the Ethereals had routinely unleashed upon the cities they had terrorized. In Mariana, some of the module stacks were ablaze or had been smashed to twisted wreckage, but entire sections of the city had remained undamaged.

Somewhere in that city, however, was an army of murderous AIs and thousands of humans who had been unable to evacuate. Some of them might have gotten their backups offworld, but that was a small comfort for the egos still in their bodies.

_"Hammer down,"_ messaged one of the air traffic infomorphs, and Harper switched his views to incorporate the incoming fire. Kinetic shots flashed past on his augmented reality display, striking the buildings where the Flashlights had concealed their AA guns. Flares of light and blooms of expanding smoke and debris marked direct hits.

Harper nodded, a rush of satisfaction sliding through him at the destruction of the enemy, and he shifted his feeds to the HULU drones' point-to-point comms. He caught images of the destruction at street level, with jerks from the drone cameras as they moved away from flying debris and navigated through smoke and dust. Other HULUs were moving through undamaged sections of the city, which were eerily quiet. Here and there, the drones came across bodies: some were humans, their bodies riddled with kinetic wounds that left blood sprayed in wide arcs. Other corpses were Flashlight platforms, their mechanical bodies melted and twisted by laser and plasma fire. One Flashlight was hanging from a wall, a gleaming white spike the length of a man's forearm impaling it through the chest. Someone down there had been packing an alloy cannon.

One of the feeds caught his eye, however. A HULU was moving silently through a module habitat. It was fairly common: generic gray-white walls, some painting and pictures hanging on the walls, a plant growing in a carefully shielded potting cylinder. Kitchenette section, couch, entertainment suite, a bed in a partitioned room. Assorted small knickknacks and pictures on simple square tables.

A Flashlight lay in the doorway, the platform cored through the torso section by a laser beam. The habitat's owner, or maybe someone who had just fled into this particular room, lay in the middle of the living area. Blood was drenched across the couch, but the body lay in the center of the room. A smear of blood stretched from the couch to the middle of the module, and the body lay on its stomach. The once-living was a dark-haired and olive-skinned man wearing the usual colonist fatigues and utility belt.

It didn't lay in a natural position, with limbs splayed or bent like it had fallen. The body lay facedown, legs straight and arms at its side. A thin pool of blood had gathered around it. Harper could see exit wounds in the man's back, and another wound in the neck, at the base of the skull.

The cortical stack that nearly every human carried was located there, right where the brain stem met the spinal column. It was a tiny data storage unit encased in a shell of synthdiamond. Altogether, it was about the size of a grape, embedded within the brainstem. That little device was constantly updated by nanobots mapping the brain's neural architecture to maintain an evolving record of the host's mind and memories. If they died, the stack could be recovered to be uploaded into a new body. It was the insurance that allowed mankind to remain immortal.

A permanent record of the ego. To some, the very soul of a person.

Except this man's stack had been deliberately, neatly cut out after death.

It was rare that Jack Harper felt a chill. But seeing that image turned his blood to ice.

He immediately sent a message back up the chain to Chevalier, carrying that image and the hideous implications.

He checked the mission clock. Two minutes until they hit.

Major Jack Harper planned for First Battalion, callsign Hades, to live up to that name.

* * *

Admiral Elena Dolvich stared at the data from the HULU drone, and found her heart beating in a way it had not done in a long time. Hard and fast, but without the icy spikes of fear to accompany the machinegun hammering. There was instead a deep, simmering heat - a controlled but deadly fury.

The Flashlights were taking cortical stacks. For what, she didn't know. Interrogation, to learn more about humanity? Flensing for data and subsequent annihilation? Destruction to ensure that their victims were permanently dead?

It didn't matter.

_"Colonel Canales,"_ she messaged.

_"Yes ma'am?"_ the colonel replied as his troops descended.

_"They are stealing our egos,"_ she growled into the text. _"Prosecute the Flashlights, but watch your fire. Our mission remains the same, but we now have to watch for stacks as well as live civilians."_

_"Understood, ma'am,"_ Canales replied, determination and a familiar, controlled outrage leaking into the message. _"Smashdown will begin in one minute."_

* * *

"Smashdown" was a simple maneuver XCOM had devised to deal with hostile airspace where the enemy knew they were coming, and XCOM needed to secure a landing zone for ground troops. The first half of the maneuver had already been carried out by the HULU drones and kinetic weapons in orbit, identifying and neutralizing enemy anti-air. XCOM planners had then selected their landing zone based on orbital scans and the patterns of enemy emplacements and numbers as outlined by the HULUs. Optimal drop zone for Hades battalion, they determined, was west of the spaceport.

The second half came as the Voidrangers descended and began to retract their armored shells. The dropships were built much like the old Skyrangers XCOM had used to fight the Ethereals and in the subsequent years of mop-up. The organization was nothing if not traditional. They had a similar profile and carried the swing-wings of their predecessors, extended during atmospheric flight. Unlike their predecessors, they used the same drive engines as the Infernos and other space-capable human aircraft. Also, unlike the old Skyrangers, these dropships had several tube-like capsules clamped to their undersides, and when the coded execution string went out, they tubes were released and began to scream down toward the surface.

Some of the tubes were long and narrow, while others were much wider. Each had a tapering end, weighted to keep it pointing down, and maneuvering thrusters to keep it on target. Vahlenite casing armored the tubes, although they couldn't withstand concentrated anti-air fire anymore than the Voidrangers that dropped them..

But thanks to the standard "blast the AA from orbit" procedure coupled with their rapid velocity on descent, the drop tubes were safe from most threats, save the terminal one that they faced on arrival at their destination.

The drop tubes fired retro-rockets as they passed below the effective envelope of anti-air weapons, but even with the shift in velocity, the tubes crashed hard enough to shatter concrete and punch through the rooftops of buildings. Debris went flying from the impacts, and the echo of the crashes could be heard for kilometers in all directions, even over the continuing rubles from the destroyed anti-air weapons.

Hence the name of the maneuver: smashdown.

The tubes were, for the most part, standing upright. Part of the tubes' sides slid outward, and a rush of transparent, overpressured hydrostatic shock-gel poured over the rooftops and streets - the main reason why the impacts from the smashdown drop-tubes didn't destroy their contents on impact. Once the tubes opened far enough, machinery began moving, and XCOM set foot on Lincoln - metaphorically-speaking, in some cases.

Smashdown operations were too risky for organic bodies. Even if you were fully backed up, it was still a waste of manpower and resources to send a soldier down who could get killed by the impact even with the shock-gel. This, combined with the high risk of the smashdown operations, demanded that non-organic personnel led the way.

One series of crash tubes deployed along the outer perimeter of the landing zone. From the gel-filled interiors of these tubes emerged quadrupedal figures of black-and-brown painted vahlenite metal. They were shaped like wolves or hunting hounds, standing at a man's stomach at their shoulders, with canine-shaped heads. Their jaws were filled with bladed teeth, and on their shoulders were gimbal turrets mounting a mass accelerator carbine and stubby alloy cannon. Extending from their hindquarters were one-and-a-half meter long, whiplike tails of bladed metal.

The FENRIR-type Light Armored Reconnaissance Systems bounded away from their landing zones, shedding their shock gel as they clambered up or down walls, rushed down streets, and vanished under optical camouflage cloaks, joining the HULU drones in scouting the city. Small launchers in their gimbal turrets fired cherry-sized capsules into buildings as they passed, releasing short-lived microbot surveillance swarms to search the structures for hostiles, survivors, or anything else of interest.

Closer into the landing zone, wider tubes opened their panels further out to accommodate the ODIN SHIVs crammed inside. They floated out, dripping gel off their gleaming disc-shaped, three meter wide bodies. The ODINs were an adaptation of both the hovering SHIV frames that XCOM had pioneered and the compact weapons and computational capacity of the Ethereals' Cyberdisc support machines. Unlike either of those older designs, however, the ODINs featured cyberbrains that allowed a human ego to sleeve into and control them directly, although most were remotely operated or controlled by VIs.

The last set of drop tubes had to extend their panels up and out to allow their occupants to clamber out. They moved with startling agility despite their two-and-a-half meter heights, virtually leaping out from their tubes and smashing to the ground in a mass of moving vahlenite metal and mechanical limbs. The MEC units were a hybrid of exoskeletal suits and cybernetic limbs; their human operators were encased in the torso, and the mechanical limbs they wore as part of their day-to-day bodies were removed, allowing the operators to interface with the machines using the same limb-to-brainstem connections.

The MEC troopers hefted boxy particle beam cannons, their exoskeletons laden with additional weapons depending on the particular trooper's specialization and preferences: missile and grenade launchers, kinetic strike modules, plasma flamethrowers, demolitions equipment, and heavy alloy cannons.

The MECs and ODINs advanced in pairs, fanning out and taking elevated positions at the intersections around the designated landing zones while scanning local frequencies for friendly or hostile transmissions. They immediately caught active, heavily-encrypted data streams, no doubt Flashlight communications, and began sending those back to the fleet.

XCOM's mechanized spearhead made no direct contact with the Flashlights, however, and sent signals back up into the atmosphere to the Voidrangers descending toward the city. With their immediate landing zone secured, and the orbital guns ready to open fire, the two battalions began to descend at full speed, swooping toward the city.

* * *

Major Jack Harper was waiting at the back ramp of his Voidranger, surrounded by a dozen other XCOM soldiers who were rising from their crash seats in the troop bay. They all wore current-generation Titan armor, suits of vahlenite plating and nanoweave mesh over powered synthetic muscle charged by a tiny elerium core. The Major was the smallest one of the soldiers present, as the majority of their bodies had undergone combat gene modding. They generally fell into an "olympian" or "fury" preset, resulting in them being a few centimeters taller and many kilograms heavier due to enhanced muscle and bone density.

When the ramp lowered, the XCOM troopers clambered down, weapons shouldered, sweeping and securing the rooftop of the module stack. The maneuver was mostly unnecessary, as a MEC pair and a group of ODINs had already secured the roof, and two more Voidrangers' worth of soldiers had touched down beforehand, but paranoia was a healthy trait in a combat zone. Harper followed them down, a laser carbine in hand but not shouldered.

He turned to peer around the rooftop, eyeing the columns of smoke rising into the blue ceiling above them, marbled by thin white clouds. The local climate was supposed to be temperate, but Harper could feel an oppressive, humid heat wash over him. Salty ocean air intermixed with the acrid smoke and rot endemic of urban warfare. Aside from the distant rumbles of a few structures still slowly falling apart, and the howl of Voidranger engines, the city was quiet.

Odd, that the Flashlights weren't contesting the XCOM landings. With the exception of the AA guns and the Flashlight corpses scattered about, they had not seen any sign of the aliens' presence. He would have expected them to be assaulting the landing sites the moment the smashdown had occurred; it was the most vulnerable time for any landing, and was what Harper would have done in their position.

Unless the enemy's numbers were not as significant as they had believed. If the Flashlights had not deployed as many ground troops as estimated, they might have opted for a defensive posture in anticipation of a counteroffensive. Ambush and maneuver inside the city rather than expending manpower - or alienpower, or mechpower - in a standup fight at the LZs.

_"Hades Battalion is deploying,"_ he messaged Colonel Canales as they finished bringing down the rest of the troops. "_Our LZ is secure. All boots on the ground, waiting for the GRENDELs to land. Expanding and securing our area-of-operations."_

_"Understood, Hades Actual,"_ Colonel Canales replied back. _"No change to the current deployment plan."_

It was a more verbose exchange than one normally had with radio-audio comms, but then, they could direct-message text with no loss of data, making detailed communications nearly effortless.

Harper opened up city maps and overlaid locations of enemy bodies and the AA guns' positions, and checked them against his area of operations: the west and northern sections of the city. Electronic warfare-specialist infomorphs were working their way into the city's mesh network, but were encountering resistance from Flashlight runtimes that had already infiltrated the wireless systems. Still, they were able to get him general information from the mesh network on the city, and most interesting were the areas of Mariana that the Flashlights didn't want him to see.

The combined intelligence picture gave him a general idea of where the enemy was positioned, and he quickly ran through the layout of the city, marking strategic points and scouted areas. He quickly began assembling a map of where the enemy was most likely positioned and where they were less likely to be at, based on the patterns he was seeing. They appeared to be centered around the main spaceport and the western half of the city, although he refused to label any area, even the battalions' LZs, as completely secured. They just didn't know the Flashlights' ground capabilities.

He descended through a rooftop door into the module stack, which was being swept by a pair of XCOM squads room by room, deploying recon swarms to secure the building's nooks and crannies. The module apartment would serve as Harper's command post, although he didn't need much more than an intact roof over his head. Almost all his battalion command staff were infomorphs and virtual intelligences operating in orbit. He could detect them conversing back and forth, their messages pinging against his consciousness as they passed reports and updated the city overlays, new data appearing as the HULU and FENRIR drones reconnoitered.

Outside, there was a rumbling howl of engines, signaling the presence of a Voidranger-HL, the largest and heaviest of the dropships. Harper shifted to view that aircraft's feeds, and could see that it was descending over an intersection just outside, with just enough room to deploy its cargo.

The GRENDEL UHIV slammed down to the pavement a moment later, and with a terrible scraping of metal claws on pavement, the heavy weapons platform rose and began to prowl down the street, weapons extended and ready to fire.

One of his battalion infomorphs pinged Harper, and he switched away from the view of the GRENDEL as it advanced toward the the enemy-held section of the city. He received an immediate report that had him pause and then switch to incoming feeds.

One of the FENRIRs had made contact with the Flashlights, within half a block of where he'd predicted the enemy was most likely to be positioned, less than a quarter of a kilometer from the spaceport perimeter.

Harper was messaging orders and updates to the battalion as the feed came in, and he received acknowledgements from the units coordinating with fleet air support. The drone was crouched in an apartment module halfway up one of the stacks, peering across a street with alternating infrared and visual sensors, along with passive radio and EM observation gear. Through a thin pall of smoke and haze, it could spy a pair of Flashlight platforms standing on a rooftop across the street, weapons in hand.

They matched the platforms that the salvage teams had recovered from their wrecked ships: lean shapes with organic curves and lines to their bodies, which were built out of a composite, quasi-vahlenite alloy that was painted a dull gray-white to hide the reflective sheen. Their "heads" were mounted on curving, flexible necks, almost serpentine in shape, with a faintly-glowing cylindrical optical cluster in the center that gave them their nickname. Like their bodies, their weapons were metallic but built in flowing, organic lines.

He needed more information. Harper sent that message along, and a moment later the FENRIR edged forward. Its pneumatic launcher loaded and fired a recon swarm capsule across the street into a window of the module stack. That would unleash enough microbots to sweep the entire building.

A heartbeat after the capsule was launched, a red line abruptly intersected the FENRIR's head, and then the drone's face exploded, most of its feeds going dark. The drone leapt back, passive sensors elsewhere on its body giving it a good view of its surroundings, and it began feeding data back as the recon swarm expanded and began sweeping the interior of the structure.

They had sniper overwatch. Unsurprising. And the recon swarm was reporting more contacts inside the building. Flashlight platforms were on the ground level and watching the street, but the drone projected the sniper shot came from a building further down the street.

Other FENRIR drones were converging on the site, and Harper began issuing engagement orders to his troops, moving several platoons forward. Organic soldiers, MECs, and ODIN drones advanced, and HULUs slipped into the enemy-occupied zone.

_"Colonel,"_ he messaged Canales as other FENRIR units came under fire. _"My troops have made contact. Moving to engage."_

* * *

"Begin session," spoke a soft, Russian-accented voice.

The Chevalier was not a science vessel, but it was the nerve center for Delta Squadron of Strike Seven, which afforded it a substantial laboratory section and medical wing. Most of the time the lab was used to supplement studies of star systems and unusual phenomena, and it became particularly busy when xenobiological studies were warranted as a result of a life-bearing world being discovered. It had never actually been used for its original purpose until today; in fact, it had been a very long time since any XCOM lab had autopsied a dead, hostile alien.

"Subject: Flashlight Platform Type Two, Identifier FL-02-OLK-7. As with previous versions of the Type Two, this one was recovered from Flashlight frigate designation FLS-OLK-22. Cause of deactivation appears to be shrapnel from a piercing shot that ruptured the deck it was operating on."

It was, admittedly, a remarkably dull affair after the seventh dissection of the same alien - particularly when those aliens were mass produced drone platforms.

"Initiating drill. Standby for mapping injection."

Doctor Prokhor Zakharov was the only scientist physically present in the room, his white environment suit glaring under the harsh overhead lights. Others - scientists, military, and intelligence personnel - watched from outside the perimeter of the containment chamber or were observing via drones flitting about the room. The chamber was a simple cube of transparent armor-crystal with a slab in the center, upon which rested one of the serpentine, humanoid Flashlight drones. A collection of tools held in long, flexible mechanical arms extended from the center of the ceiling: saws, blades, pry bars, samplers, injectors, drills, and more. Vahlenite armor shutters were on standby to slam down and isolate the chamber, with ECM and psi-jammers ready to cut off any outgoing signals.

But Zakharov had no reason to suspect such security was needed. The Flashlight drones had wiped their memory cores before or upon being disabled, rendering them inert to the point where there wasn't anything functional remaining in their processors. Even so, he had taken the precaution of sleeving into his backup body, a model that, while not quite as mentally adept as his day-to-day unit, was far more expendable, not to mention fitted for close-in laboratory work. The specialized tools and sensors, mounted on the secondary limbs affixed to his backbone just below the shoulder blades, were hovering over the alien corpse.

He leaned over the drone, directing the machinery overhead to extend a drill into the Flashlight's outer casing. A piercing whine sounded as the drill cut into the drone's armor. Zakharov's arms descended around the smoking hole as the drill retracted, and one of them extended an injector, releasing a small package of mapping microbots.

Several seconds passed as the swarm did its work, and a wireframe schematic of the Flashlight appeared over the corpse. Data streams between the other scientists and technicians flitted across his awareness, but he ignored them, focusing on his task.

"Interior structure matches previous Type Two Flashlight platforms," Zakharov continued, after overlaying the schematic over previous platforms of the same type they had disassembled. Save the damage that had disabled the aliens, they aligned perfectly. The salvage teams had encountered a slightly different variation, with heavier armor and different element zero manipulation systems. The Type Twos were the most common, however.

"As with the other Type Twos," he continued, "the interior structure is remarkably compact, with significant open space within the 'chest cavity'," He outlined the thick collection of cabling running up the center of the flexible mechanical "backbone" of the platform. More than half the internal volume in the drone was taken up by empty space. Unless a mass accelerator hit the central cabling and power core, damage to the platform would be minimal.

"The central cognitive stack and electrical-conductive fluids are remarkably undamaged in this specimen," he continued. "Shrapnel damage appears to be localized around the central power generation systems. Some sections of the cognitive matrix may be intact. I doubt we'll get actual cognitive processing code or stored data from the remains, but the hardware looks very salvageable in this specimen. We will initiate our first casing breach now."

More saws began to whine, and they descended from the central apparatus. Zakharov's arms joined them, poking and probing among the flying sparks, prying open a larger part of the casing.

"As with previous models," he droned, "casing composition is an alloy with a similar spectral reading as our own vahlenite, although with a differing composition. This version is resistant to laser and plasma drilling, but less so to kinetic drilling. Projected capacity to resist military-grade plasma and laser weaponry is… considerable.

"As with the other Type Twos, this Flashlight model has significant element zero masses in components recessed into the casing, particularly in the forearms. These may be generators for the alien 'shields' or some other mass effect manipulation technology. There are very small interface ports mounted in the casing, presumably for interacting with equipment and weaponry. We have identified what may be launchers for microbot swarms, presumably for reconnaissance or mapping purposes. Samples of microbots have been taken for analysis."

The saws ceased, and he pulled open a section of the chest plating, exposing the glowing, blue-white cables wrapping around the central spinal column of the drone. Tens of thousands of cords, ranging from finger-thick cables to hair-thin wiring weaved into a complex mesh within the machine.

"I must reiterate my surprise at the sophistication of this drone," Zakharov continued as he worked. "The internal complexity of something as small and apparently utilitarian as these machines is remarkable, especially when compared with our own drones. These appear to be more akin to a networked warship cyberbrain or a GRENDEL walker than a disposable soldier mech."

The saws began to whine again.

"Beginning second casing breach now," he droned. "We will attempt extraction of specimen's cognitive processing center…."

* * *

Doctor Viktor Zakharov watched himself conduct the dissection with only half an eye to what his fork was doing. He had already decided that if he was going to continue autopsying the Flashlight bodies, it would be best if a short-lived alpha fork handled the dull, repetitive duties in the backup body while he observed what was truly intriguing

He was tapped into a simulspace environment that was currently inhabited by most of their analysts and researchers, many of them either infomorphs or physical bodies tapped into the datastreams from the surface. Surrounding them in the white void were hundreds of floating screens, each of them displaying transmitted feeds from the units moving - and now fighting - on the surface. Figures floated and shifted freely through simulspace, many humanoid copies of their physical bodies, while others were ghostly apparitions or more imaginative forms: mythological beasts, machines, spacecraft, shifting abstract images, and one particular researcher who appeared as an enormous black cube, since everyone was autocensoring his actual avatar of constantly-shifting versions of human genetalia.

Discussing your research notes with a giant blue barbed phallus was… distracting, after all.

Technically, Zakharov wasn't wasn't part of the XCOM Direct Action chain of command, being a member of the Research division - although in practical matters, once the plasma started flying, everyone in the Direct Action division was above him. XCOM's internal structure was very clearly defined: Direct Action handled combat operations, Research handled non-psionic scientific and engineering endeavours, Intelligence was responsible for gathering information - both on outside and internal threats to humanity - and Psionic Corps was responsible for finding, training and policing the Gifted. Where the interests of divisions intersected, the one who had jurisdiction over a particular area was king.

What all that meant was that he was technically not supposed to be viewing this data, as this was crucial up-to-date battlefield intelligence. In reality, command wanted their best minds studying everything they could get on the aliens to advise the troops on the ground. It was an XCOM tradition springing from the Ethereal War, though Zakharov simply made it a point to not butt in to chastise the troops if they needed to blow the enemy up.

Zakharov's current body had a number of augments to enhance cognitive functions, among them being a multitasking implant that let him fork off multiple short-term copies of himself to process the wealth of data he was receiving. In the simulspace environment, he could see a dozen-plus copies of himself: tall, lean, dark-haired and pale-skinned, wearing separate sets of goggles over each eyes, one green and one red. Purely cosmetic, of course, but they helped differentiate him from the other avatars. Zakharov and all of his forks were busy dividing attention between a number of feeds while also tasking VIs and his research assistants to monitoring others of less import. He picked out select data streams from HULU and FENRIR drones and XCOM infantry squads as they began to encounter the aliens on the ground.

Two more FENRIR units had been destroyed within seconds of the initial unit's destruction, along with another of the flying drones. Hostile contact was being reported all along the human line of advance, with rapid reports of multiple critical injuries. He locked into video footage of different points of contact, and focused on one specific set of data feeds from a fireteam engaging the Flashlights from the rooftops.

The XCOM team was a standard six-man squad, which was as far as Zakharov understood military organization. It had the core of a team leader with supporting equipment, heavy weapons specialist, marksman, and assault specialist, with the last two members of this unit made up of a combat medic and demolitions engineer. These troops wore standard heavy-assault Titan suits, turning them into armored, bulky figures of gray urban-camouflaged plating and artificial muscle. As far as he had been told, the team's makeup would change depending on the mission; active XCOM platoons and even companies were very malleable entities.

This team was fighting Flashlights on a module stack rooftop, having crossed over the intersecting street with grappling lines, Titan armor, and gene-augmented bones and muscles. It was vicious, close-quarters, and rapid-fire; the red beams of laser and blinding green fury of plasma intermixing with the blue-tinged tracers of Flashlight weapons. They maneuvered with an amazing clarity of information and coordination. XCOM troopers advanced aggressively, encircling and flanking Flashlight positions while others laid down torrents of suppressing fire or dropped chaff and ECM smoke upon enemy positions to disrupt their sensors. The Flashlights answered almost instantly, the serpentine platforms repositioning as fast as the XCOM troopers advanced and laying down constant, almost endless suppressing fire, as though ammunition was a nonfactor in their battle plans.

Zakharov watched closely as plasma weaponry from a heavy cannon toted by the squad's weapons trooper washed across a trio Flashlights hiding inside a module on the rooftop. The torrent of brilliant green-white violence splashed over the metal and ceramic of the module's wall, melting and blasting apart the aliens' cover. The doctor focused on that image, watching closely through the trooper's own tactical readings. Data from the man's augmented senses and helmet display showed the plasma tearing through the building but stopping half a meter from the aliens themselves.

The same kind of barrier that had stopped their ship-to-ship weapons, but scaled down to the infantry level. Fascinating.

But unlike in vacuum, the air around the aliens conducted radiative heat far more effectively. He could see the aliens' armor begin to glow a bright white, and the trio of aliens scattered the moment the superheated gas struck their shields. Two of them managed to leap away from the barrage and reach safety, while the third lurched away from the plasma before abruptly collapsing, metal sloughing off in glowing white rivulets and its glowing eye abruptly shattering.

_"Radiative heat from plasma bombardment can overwhelm their armor and overheat internals,"_ Zakharov noted to himself. _"Barriers are able to halt kinetic energy and physical material like bullets or plasma, but they cannot defeat energy like directed photons or thermal radiation. This has to be some new application of element zero. A gravity-based defensive system, perhaps? The computational and energy requirements would be significant, and it would have to be an active defense system to be anything economical for infantry deployment."_

He shifted to another viewpoint on the rooftop, where an assaulter was moving through a set of connected, open-air agricultural modules while two other teammates poured laser and plasma fire into pair of Flashlights shooting from the windows of the prefab structure. The assaulter burst into the module, and the drones spun on her, opening fire instantly. The shots whipped past and around her, none touching the XCOM trooper as she snapped up her alloy cannon. Zakharov knew there was nothing supernatural about what he witnessed; the assaulter was equipped with a fury morph and reaction-enhancing gene and cybernetic implants. She was evading almost before the enemy fired their weapons.

As she closed in, the assaulter's alloy cannon snapped up and fired, launching a penetrator spike into a Flashlight's midsection. The gleaming silvery spear lanced into the target's torso and staked it to a wall in a spray of white electro-conductive fluid.

The assaulter ducked behind cover as the cannon loaded another spike into the chamber, but when she stepped out to fire another shot, a glowing blue-white hexagonal wall had suddenly formed between the drone and the human. The assaulter fired anyway, and the vahlenite spike impacted the barrier, smashing against it and bouncing off.

Zakharov leaned forward, staring intently. What the hell was that? Temporary freestanding kinetic barrier? His mind began to race as he tried to piece together how that could even work.

Utterly _fascinating_.

The assaulter fell back, loading another spike, and then a brilliant red line sliced into the drone's midsection, melting through the armor. The drone toppled from the laser strike, emitting a sudden burst of stuttering, harsh audio. Zakharov's eyebrows rose on his simulspace avatar at the sound. Some form of final data transmission? He messaged one of his forks, telling him to collect as much emissions data from that timestamp as possible from the various sensor systems in that area, before moving on.

The doctor took a mental step back from the battlefield, watching from a wider perspective of collated data from drones and troopers. Two FENRIR drones had reached the rooftop and were flanking another group of Flashlights, leaping among the drones. Flares of electricity arced off one of the Flashlight drones, scrambling the electronics of one of the mechanical dogs, but the other fell upon the alien drone with its alloy cannon, pinning it against the wall with a short spike and then ripping it apart with its bladed tail.

Overhead, a pair of ODIN drones were shifting into weapon deployment mode about eighty meters above the rooftop. Their disc-shaped hulls slid onto their sides and split open, revealing a quartet of laser cannons and a trio of missile pods. A sudden torrent of laser fire sliced across the rooftop into Flashlight positions, passing through their barriers and blasting into their bodies. Several alien drones fell in seconds.

The Flashlights didn't rout, but they clearly decided they could not hold the rooftop. Zakharov watched them begin a phased withdrawal, individual units falling back to the edge of the rooftops while others poured down covering fire. He saw a ruthless calculus of warfare play out, drone units holding position while others escaped the ODINs' killbox and the XCOM and FENRIR units closing in. The defenders held position, and though they were buried under plasma, laser, and alloy fire in seconds, they bought the majority of the survivors enough time to scramble to the edge of the rooftop and leap off into the streets below.

Then Zakharov witnessed a warning signal flashing across the local platoon network, and the ODINs abruptly closed back up, concealing their weapons and diving toward the rooftops.

A torrent of high-powered kinetic rounds cut through both of the drones and sliced them in half, sending chunks of rent metal careening into the streets below. The shots were backtraced instantly, and Zakharov shifted his feeds to cameras and sensors tracking the weapon that had swatted the ODINs out of the sky.

The Flashlight war machine towered on the rooftop it had claimed, standing three meters tall and wielding a weapon that was as large as a fully-kitted XCOM trooper. The enormous armored platform resembled its smaller kin, but bulkier and heavier in proportion, with a pair of large fin-like antennae rising from their shoulders. The moment it was done shooting, the massive Flashlight turned and plodded toward the edge of the roof, moving with a steady, efficient lope that reminded Zakharov of their own MECs, or maybe the Ethereals' heavy but agile war machines and powered armors.

"Fascinating," he murmured to himself. He _had_ to dissect one of those machines.

* * *

Major Harper was not interested in dissecting the new Flashlights. He just wanted them _destroyed_. Multiple units had engaged his troops at the same time, and the new platforms had already cost him seven ODINs, as well as two more HULU recon units. Two of his squads had been close enough to the juggernauts when they opened fire that the hulking machines had turned their guns on the troops.

On his feeds, Harper watched a medic frantically working through the aftermath of a brush with the Flashlight juggernauts, vahlenite gloves slick with blood working on the back of a trooper's helmet to extract his cortical stack. The fact that the helmet was detached from the rest of the body - itself an unrecognizable mass of shredded Titan armor and viscera - made it a little bit easier to open the back panel, cut into the ragged skin over the brainstem, and pop out the grape-sized storage device.

That was one of the worst examples of what the guns did to his troopers. Most were in better shape, and had not suffered full body death. Olympian and fury presets came with secondary support organs and medichine implants standard that kept them alive in case of catastrophic injury, of which a lot of his troops had suffered. The drones were taking the bulk of casualties, but the Flashlights had killed or incapacitated nearly forty of his troops thus far.

_First encounters on the ground are always bloody._

_"Bring the Infernos in closer, but tell them to be ready for enemy AA,"_ Harper messaged the informorph coordinating their air support. They didn't know the range on the new platforms' heavy guns. _"And task the remaining FAFNIRs for immediate close-in support to replace the ODINs."_

He was hesitant to deploy the full firepower of an airstrike on the aliens until he was certain the target area was clear of humans. But the enemy juggernauts were powerful monsters that he was reluctant to pitt anything short of a GRENDEL or MEC against. Maybe a couple of heavies with blaster launchers.

He scowled, shaking his head, and issued orders to his heavy units to advance on the areas the juggernauts had emerged from. They had to crush this new problem quickly, and learn its secrets, strengths, and weaknesses. Some would argue he was reckless in this tactic, but he wanted this battle over as quickly as possible, and was willing to sacrifice men for decisive victory and enemy intelligence. The fact that almost all of those soldiers had backups stored on the Chevalier made him more willing to trade bodies for tactical and strategic advantage.

Officer training had often argued the merits of particular strategies in first hostile-encounter scenarios. Deployment of every possible - and practical - weapon against them to find out what worked and what didn't, versus a conservative approach to limit the enemy learning ones' capabilities. Harper favored the former, as he believed that destroying the enemy and learning what destroyed him most quickly was preferable. If the aliens were the aggressors, they likely already knew about human capabilities anyway.

Looking at the battle unfolding, at how they were fighting an enemy that was specifically adapted to fight human weapons and technology, he couldn't help but feel vindicated in that belief.

_"Major, got a high priority from 1st Squad, 3rd Platoon, Company,"_ one of Harper's aides messaged. "_Survivors."_

_"Patch it,"_ Harper ordered, shifting automatically to another channel as easily as breathing. "Go ahead."

_"Sir,"_ messaged Sergeant Anna Fornier - former EU, French military, now XCOM squad leader, according to the her ID tag and service record flashing past Harper's eyes the moment he connected to the squad. _"Got laser and some plasma fire coming from these coordinates but no military IFFs. Someone who's not XCOM or PPA is shooting up the Flashlights."_

The coordinates Fornier mentioned popped up, and with an eyeblink Harper referenced the location. It was a school set up in the second colonization wave. The platoon had already vectored a HULU to investigate, which was confirming plasma and laser fire coming out from the school's upper levels toward the surrounding buildings. Energy readings consistent with what they were seeing from the Flashlights were surrounding the structure.

Harper wasted no time opening a channel to the entire platoon and issuing new orders.

* * *

Researcher Adam Glaser had never seen combat this close before. But then, he'd never volunteered to ride-along in someone's cortical implant into a combat zone, residing in a ghostrider module implanted in an XCOM squadleader. It was a refreshing experience to see things from the perspective of the troops on the ground.

Of course, if he actually had either a urinary system or pants, he would have wet himself by now at the sheer amount of gunfire flowing back and forth like rivers of brightly-lit death. Sure, his mind was backed up on the Chevalier in case the module was destroyed in battle, but that didn't take away the instinctive terror when he realized those blue-tinged tracers whipping past the helmet his host wore could kill them both.

At the moment, they were charging through a door, the weight of a laser rifle barely registering on gene-modded musculature and power armor. Bullets where lancing past, tiny, almost grain-sized things, which could still annihilate unprotected flesh on impact. Through a cloud of chaff and the ricocheting remains of flechettes from grenades, he could see the enemy.

The laser rifle hummed and discharged, a scything red beam slicing into a humanoid form with a glowing eye, set into a snake's neck and head. The beam bore through the Flashlight's torso, armor glowing white-hot around the red spear before exploding, and the alien fell, the light fading from its eye and a wail of white noise heralded its death.

"Clear!" shouted Sergeant Fornier, her voice ringing through the module as she finished sweeping the room. Echoes of her word came from the other two XCOM troopers who had breached the room.

Two more dead Flashlights lay in the residential module, one speared by laser beams and the other pinned to a wall by a silver spike. That one was writhing on the alloy penetrator, trying to tear it free, until it stopped and went abruptly limp, blasting white noise and its lights fading.

_"Huh, I think that one just committed suicide,"_ Glaser remarked.

_"They all do, I guess,"_ Fornier messaged back, before speaking out loud. "All clear. Move to the next one."

Glaser drank in all the data he could from the squad tactical network. It was his purpose. He was riding along mostly to get an up-close perspective on the enemy for the researchers who would inevitably be trying to understand the enemy to better kill them. The soldiers could provide useful information, of course, but a set of eyes present, exclusively dedicated to observation of enemy behavior, was invaluable.

He'd volunteered for the job, sleeving into an infomorph body from his normal physical body for the mission, and uploaded into Fornier's ghostrider, which she's volunteered to carry, apparently because she was curious about having a second mind tagging along in her suit. Glaser tried to be a gracious and polite guest in his host's body, reserving his commentary for when killing/survival wasn't a priority.

He just hadn't expected it to be quite so pants-shittingly terrifying, especially when his fight-or-flight instincts - wonderfully preserved even in infolife state - were rendered impotent when he had no control over the body doing the fighting and none of the flying.

They descended a set of stairs and began the process of assault-and-clear once again. Glaser was rapidly becoming used to the experience, which only marginally reduced the terror of stacking up outside a room, hurling a grenade inside, and then charging right after it to make sure whatever was in the room was crushed beneath humanity's technologically-sophisticated boots.

Their squad, and the rest of their platoon, plus a pair of MECs and some ODINs that had joined them, were sweeping through the buildings adjacent to the school where the survivors were holed up, clearing the aliens out room by bloody room. Glaser counted more than twenty dead Flashlights by the time they had cleared this block, as well as some interesting observations.

_"They're using plasma weapons,"_ he mused as the squad advanced toward the rooftop.

_"Don't look like any plasma I've seen,"_ Fornier replied.

_"No, not like ours,"_ Glaser thought, looking more closely at some of the recordings pulled off the squad's tactical network. He concentrated on radiation markers. _"Well, I mean, kind of like ours. Our guns make plasma, and so do theirs. But they're doing it differently."_

_"How?"_ Fornier asked, her message curious. _"Actually, hold that."_ "Standby to breach!"

Glaser waited in silent, mostly-controlled terror as the squad burst onto the stack's rooftop and killed two more Flashlights. He dutifully recorded all the aliens' actions and behaviors as they shot at and were shot by XCOM.

"_Well, I'm not sure how familiar you are with the workings of our plasma weapons,"_ Glaser said.

_"I have to be able to break down, clean, and reassemble these things in my sleep,"_ Fornier replied.

_"Oh. Okay. So, you know our guns produce the plasma directly and shape it into a murderbeam with all that melty goodness,"_ Glaser explained. _"But their weapons don't. I think they use some kind of projectile that generates plasma on contact with a target."_

_"So that explains all those blue flashes when those shotgun analogues they carry hit something?"_ Fornier asked as they bounded toward the edge of the roof.

_"I think so,"_ Glaser said, nodding before he remembered he was literally nothing but data carried on a storage device jammed into his host's neck. _"I really want to look at their guns when we're not getting shot at."_

_"I can arrange that,_ mon ami," Fornier replied, before leaping off the top of the building.

Glaser knew that no matter how many times he would ghostride with XCOM soldiers, this was never going to be any less terrifying.

The XCOM squad hit the street all around Fornier with crunches of damaged pavement underneath Titan stompy-boots. None of them showed any discomfort as they bounded toward the school in a staggered formation, weapons sweeping in all directions. Glaser could hear more gunfire in buildings on the other side of the school, giving plenty of reason for the squad to be cautious.

Also, there were about a hundred Flashlight bodies lying in the streets surrounding the school. Glaser paid careful attention to them, and was very careful to take detailed scans on them, just as with every other Flashlight corpse they had encountered. Many were damaged in clear and obvious ways, but others simply lay in the streets or behind objects with no indicator as to what had killed them.

"XCOM!" Fornier shouted as they approached the school, her voice amplified by the Titan helmet's speaker. "XCOM! Coming in!"

_"You really need to yell that?"_ Glaser asked. _"I mean, who'd mistake us for Flashlights?"_

"I'd rather yell a bit than get my ass burnt off," Fornier replied out loud as they crossed the street and entered the damaged main entrance to one of the school blocks. Just inside, clearly visible on the helmet's scanners, was the thermal profile of a human man, baseline body-type, clutching a laser carbine while crouching behind a desk.

His mesh ID popped up the moment the Titan suit queried and received a reply: Wade, Harlan, research scientist and part-time science teacher at the local school.

"Oh, thank God, you're human," the young man breathed, standing up. He clutched the laser rifle in trembling hands, although the presence of a couple of destroyed Flashlights in the room indicated that he was at least somewhat competent.

"Damn straight," Fornier replied. "How many survivors do you have?"

"Uh," Wade started, shaking his head. "Um. Two hundred or so, last time I checked. Um, most are upstairs. The militia and the wounded."

"How many militia?" she asked, while sending messages to her team.

_"Tekembe, Alfonso, secure this room. Lawson, Mikhailovich, rooftop. Massani, with me when we go inside."_

"Thirty or so," Wade said. Glaser noted there was a far-off look in his eye, which he guessed was the thousand yard stare everyone talked about. "Mostly police or civilians. I can, ah, take you up there to meet them?"

"That would be a good idea," Fornier replied while her troops moved to positions, two of them taking up spots covering the door while two more jogged outside and then used grapplers and their leg muscles to launch themselves three stories up. Glaser decided then and there that he really wanted those muscle enhancements.

"Right," the shell-shocked young scientist said, and nodded. "This… this way, ma'am."

"Son, I earned these scars, don't ma'am me," she replied, but her tone was light as she followed Wade into the building.

* * *

"Hm. I didn't think kinetic weapons could be so effective,"

Zakharov - or at least, one of his many forks at the moment - reviewed reports of injuries sustained and catalogued by the troops' suits, and forwarded the interesting bits to the prime mind. Unsurprisingly, most of the wounds were easily survivable, even the ones involving massive internal damage. Not to mention that all the troops had backups made before the drop, just in case of the destruction or capture of their stacks, so there was little risk of permanent death even if the body was killed.

Thus, Zakharov focused on the data itself, and made a point to ignore the causes of that data, at least for the moment. He didn't need to be distracted by thinking about a medical report on a lung that had been shredded and was still desperately trying to draw in oxygen, or a soldier whose eyes and nose were torn apart by kinetic rounds hammering his helmet, or the last data stream of a man who was reduced to bloody slurry by a juggernaut's gun.

Instead, he focused on the extent of the damage they were seeing, and he was surprised at the effectiveness of alien weapons. The Flashlights had killed or critically injured more than a hundred XCOM troopers so far, and while that was only a temporary loss, the ineffectiveness of the Titan armor against their weapons was deeply worrying. A repetitive pattern emerged, of the enemy weapons penetrating Titan plating and then somehow fragmenting inside to slice apart the organs of the soldier. It was too soon for an autopsy, of course, but he was suspecting the aliens were using vahlenite ammunition designed to pierce vahlenite armor.

This was yet another piece of evidence that confirmed an even greater mystery: the aliens were prepared specifically to fight XCOM and humanity. Yet they had never encountered mankind before. In fact, mankind hadn't even been in this sector for more than a year, ever since the array was constructed at a small relay.

Zakharov withdrew from his observations, the simulspace equivalent of pushing back his chair and crossing his arms in deep thought. None of this made any sense. The aliens had seemed entirely focused on killing humans, with no other motivation. Well, except seizing cortical stacks. Beyond that, they had taken no obvious action of any kind to indicate their motives.

He sat for several minutes, contemplating everything that was happening, trying to put together the clues.

He was in that same position when three high-priority alerts popped up next to him, taking the form of hovering, glowing spheres. With a wave of a simulated hand, he accessed the first.

* * *

_"Major, I've got some news,"_ messaged one of his company commanders. Harper looked away from the battlefield and brought up the commander in question, Captain Reynolds of C Company.

_"Go ahead,"_ Harper replied.

_"My boys who linked up with the survivors at that school got some interesting data,"_ Reynolds said. _"That school had a direct link to an observatory that was watching the entire Flashlight invasion, right up until it got blown to hell. You might want to look at this, sir."_

Data spilled across Harper's display. He recognized orbital tracks and signals, and a complex plotting or spacecraft movements. He also recognized the clear and obvious signatures of Flashlight frigates and cruisers. As well as several unknowns.

_"Captain, this can't be right,"_ Harper said. _"This data points to there being over a hundred Flashlight ships in orbit, with three of them being carrier-scale."_ He frowned, and checked the timestamp.

Three hours before Strike Seven Delta had arrived in-system. An armada that would have annihilated the entire squadron had been in the system.

Where the hell did those ships go?

A kernel of dread formed in his gut, and Harper opened a channel to Colonel Canales, while forwarding the data directly to Chevalier.

That was when all hell broke loose on the battlefield plot.

Red markers of Flashlight units suddenly appeared close to the XCOM units advancing on the spaceport, including seventeen of the markers indicating Flashlight juggernauts. They were charging across the rooftops and in the streets, weapons blazing. Casualty reports flashed across the display, almost too quickly to follow.

_"Flashlight counterattack!"_ he messaged. _"Air support! Chevalier! I need airstrikes at these coordinates now!"_

* * *

Zakharov viewed the fleet data with intense curiosity. Yet another mystery.

He counted one hundred and nine ships. The vessels that had been present during Operation: LIGHTNING KING were all accounted for, but there had been four times as many ships, along with three enormous craft matching the Chevalier in tonnage. That was enough firepower to destroy the entire fleet defending the wormhole array and sack every human colony in the sector.

The allied human fleet had struggled and bled so much to defeat a bare fraction of the Flashlight presence.

Where were the aliens now?

With a chill, Zakharov opened the second file.

* * *

"Running analysis on intact Flashlight cognitive processors," Zakharov's fork said.

He peered at the complex web of filaments and cables and tubes, light playing over them from scanners and microbots carefully mapping the web. He could hear the buzzing and murmurs of his fellow research staff as they discussed what they were seeing.

"In the meantime, I will begin examination of the specimen's limbs. This one has a remarkably intact upper left arm compared with previous specimens."

The saws began to whine again, and he delved into the artificial muscles of the alien drone.

"Doctor!" one of the informorphs abruptly said several minutes later as he was cutting into the Flashlight's upper arm. He looked up at the little drone controlled by one of his assistants, a squeaky female voice of Researcher Guzman. "I found something amazing!"

"What is it?" Zakharov asked, raising an eyebrow.

"Well, okay, I didn't find it, it was Benito, and - will you get that thing out of my face!"

"He is flashing again? I told you to update your autocensors."

"Yeah, I just - there, updated, enjoy being a cube again, _ass_. Anyway, he was doing a fractal analysis of the Flashlight cognitive structure. Maybe seeing how it might have evolved over time from previous versions, assuming this is a self-evolving AI lifeform. Maybe we could predict underlying behavioral patterns. Nothing, you know, high priority or anything, no one expected this to actually be relevant right now, but-"

"Guzman, priorities." Honestly, she would be hyperventilating if she had lungs right now. Thankfully her body was asleep and drooling while her brain was working.

"Okay, okay, sorry." She paused for a moment. "Analysis of the Flashlight cognitive structure. We got a _match_, doctor."

Zakharov stared at her for a moment in silence.

"Show me."

* * *

Zakharov - the primary one - was staring at all the myriad research data from the aliens, found himself staring at two separate pieces of technology, divided in timeframe by centuries and thousands of light-years' worth of distance. One recovered from a machine destroyed a few hours ago in a battle in the void over Hallis. The other, archived research data on a machine destroyed in the hangar bay of Ethereal Cargo Ship 018, shot down over Siberia in May 2018.

While outwardly they were far removed, the most basic construction of the machinery, right down to the arrangement of individual superconducting circuits, was an exact match.

On the left, a Flashlight cognitive processor. On the right, a Sectopod cognitive processor.

His eyes turned toward the third alert, and he opened it.

* * *

Rear Admiral Dolvich looked up at her holographic system display when a new signal appeared amidst a burst of Cherenkov radiation.

_"FTL signal!"_ messaged one of the Chevalier's sensor officers. Admiral Dolvich turned toward the man, bringing up the feeds on her AR display, and stopped in mid-step.

_"Flashlight signature confirmed,"_ messaged the sensor officer, whose tone rapidly shifted from alarmed to puzzled. _"But its tiny… and there's only one ship."_

Indeed, there was only one contact, and it was only about the size of an alien frigate. It had dropped out of faster-than-light in orbit over Lincoln's north pole, but was remaining stationary.

"Targeting solution," Dolvich barked. "Prepare to engage."

_"Aye, ma'am, message out. All ships report ready to engage."_

On the hologram, the markers indicating allied warships were adjusting position, several burning toward the new contact. Indicators of wormhole readiness popped up, and the aircraft waiting in the carrier's launch tubes reported readiness.

_"Admiral,"_ the comms officer suddenly messaged. _"I think… they're transmitting something."_

"Start decryption," Dolvich ordered immediately. "See if you can figure out where its going."

_"Ma'am,"_ the comms officer said, shaking his head in confusion. _"Its in the clear, no encryption… and its using _our_ comms protocols. They're transmitting to _us_."_

* * *

The Flashlights threw everything they had XCOM.

Harper counted hundreds of infantry platforms, eighteen juggernauts, and something else: three meter tall, quadrupedal machines with legs thick with synthetic muscle and long, serpentine necks. Recessed cannons built into their glowing head sections fired rivers of kinetic rounds into the shocked XCOM troops.

The abrupt tide of synthetic platforms and blazing kinetic weapons tore into the XCOM squads who had been advancing into the enemy positions moments before, and two entire squads were wiped out in seconds, their bodies torn apart by heavy Flashlight guns. The squads in question returned fire, dropping half a dozen of the platforms in bursts of red and green light, but it was a bucket against a flood.

Harper's orders flew out like machinegun bullets, repositioning a hundred and more XCOM troops while calling down multiple airstrikes against the oncoming horde. Despite the deadly concentration of enemy force, it was also a massed foe who were ideal targets for bombardment.

If only the human troops could hold them in place long enough.

The XCOM troops shifted from offense to defense with a smooth efficiency borne of training and well-oiled communications practice, their line bulging backward as the Flashlights charged. XCOM formed a defensive line around four blocks of module stacks, surges of laser beams, plasma bolts, and kinetic rounds raging back and forth. Sheer volume of fire - walls of blue-tinged bullets intense enough to tear through walls and cover from sheer mass and kinetic energy - were driving the XCOM defenders back.

Harper watched one group of soldiers on a rooftop driven back, a third of their number cut down and left dead or down and running on secondary organs. In the gap their presence formed, a pair of juggernauts charged forward and leapt clear across the street, easily clearing twenty-five meters between the two rooftops. They landed with heavy impacts, raising their weapons to slice upon a hole in the defensive line.

A pair MECs met them.

The titanic, three-meter tall mass of metal and man, straddling the line between powered armor, walking tank, and cybernetic augments, leapt toward the alien machines from another rooftop, and charged toward them with ground-shaking stomps. One of MECs raised a long, boxy particle cannon and fired, a blue-white column of annihilation intercepting the juggernaut before it could bring its own mass accelerator to bear. The beam tore the Juggernaut's upper torso apart, blasting a gaping circular hole in its head and chest. The hulk of Flashlight machinery fell in a massive crash of rent machinery.

The second juggernaut was much closer to the MECs, and caught a screaming, rocket-boosted fist directly in the center of the chest, courtesy of the second MEC trooper's kinetic strike module. The impact of a solid vahlenite mass in the middle of its body crumpled the outer plating, smashed internal components, and launched the Flashlight into the air to tumble into the streets below.

Return fire swept toward the two MECs who had exposed themselves to destroy the juggernauts. More than twenty weapons converged on the pair of looming soldiers, who fell back, bullets slicing past and bouncing off their massive plating. Shots penetrated their armor, sending blood flying and internal fluids spraying, but they were MECs; small arms would need to work hard to kill them.

Purple light, swirling and fluid, washed over the MECs, and the bullets hammering them went flying in multiple directions, deflecting off the twisting barricade of psionic energy. The trooper responsible stood in the epicenter of a hurricane of psychic power violet-white light blazing around the soldier's head. XCOM soldiers rallied around the defensive barrier, firing from beneath its comforting protection.

Below, in the streets and alleys, fighting was even more savage and intense. Harper witnessed one of the Flashlight quadruped machines stomping through a street along the line, ignoring the plasma and laser fire that rained upon it and returning fire with deadly precision. Its guns pounded the rooftops and facings of the buildings, driving back the XCOM troops trying to hold those positions. Weapons fire that was superheating the armor of smaller Flashlight platforms was barely registering on the prowling, long-necked weapon's plating.

A pair of glowing green orbs abruptly rocketed out of the building, diving toward the alien machine. The blaster bombs weaved unerringly toward the war machine and slammed into its shields, bathing the street in raw destructive heat and force. Concrete glowed and melted, air expanded outward in a roar of violence, and the Flashlight machine stomped out of the detonation with shaky legs, heat radiating off of the armor.

Its cast its head back toward the building it was firing at and launched another barrage at the humans within. Under the cover of its guns, other Flashlights charged into the open toward the building.

They abruptly halted and scattered when the first GRENDEL arrived.

If the FENRIR drones were built around wolves or hunting cats, then the GRENDEL UHIV was an enormous, armor-plated bear. It was a towering four meters tall, with a bulky upper body covered in layered vahlenite plating, its legs massive constructions of synthetic muscle. It lumbered forward with that unnaturally fluid agility; something so big just didn't move that easily, crunching over urban ruin and weaving between buildings with glowing weapons systems locking onto targets.

Where the bear's head would have been was a gimbal mount, carrying twinned laser cannons and a heavy plasma weapon, both shining bright enough to light the entire street. On its back was a heavy turret mounting a long, boxy particle cannon that matched the GRENDEL's eight meter length, extending a couple of meters past its forward guns. There was no crew; instead the GRENDEL was piloted by a pair of infomorphs who managed the bulky walker.

The Flashlight war machine turned toward the GRENDEL and opened fire with its kinetic weapons, and there was a streak of light that erupted from the thing's head, a bolt of blue-white plasma that crashed into the GRENDEL's forward armor that sent out a crackling detonation, shorting out most of the feeds from the UHIV and scrambling its targeting. The Flashlight advanced, kinetic weapons hammering the stumbling UHIV's armor for several long seconds.

Then, with an almost biological shiver, the GRENDEL set its feet, its weapons swiveling to face the Flashlight right as its data feeds restored. Energy surged through laser, plasma, and particle weapons.

Green, red, and blue-white destruction exploded into the Flashlight. A burst of brilliant illumination washed over the street, and a moment later the synthetic's head section was crashing to the street, separated from a body that was blown in half.

The GRENDEL advanced, crushing the remains of the Flashlight walker and firing into the other aliens that had been behind the war machine.

_"Hades Actual, airstrikes inbound,"_ reported the battalion coordinator infomorph. _"Orbital guns are ready to fire. Targets?"_

"Everything," Harper said, looking away from the battle. He quickly highlighted the entire area the Flashlights were currently contained in, at least for the moment. "Level this area. Plasma, kinetics, lasers. Wipe it clean."

_"There are dead and incapacitated personnel in the strike zone, sir,"_ the infomorph said. _"We might not be able to recover their stacks or bodies if we do this."_

"They're backed up," Harper said, his voice cold enough to surprise even him. "Burn it all."

_"Roger that, sir,"_ the infomorph replied. "_Targeting sent. Weapons firing."_

* * *

Zakharov stared at the evidence, and shook his head in disbelief. It should have been obvious.

Enemy force composition. Unprovoked attack on humanity. Familiar technology and construction. Seizing cortical stacks, as if they were trying to understand humans. Three-fourths of their fleet abandoning the system shortly after the ground attack had occurred. Multiple instances of shut-down Flashlight platforms, as though they had deactivated themselves. The fact that they were geared specifically to fight humanity. An irrational, suicidal final attack.

And a basic structural match between Sectopod and Flashlight processors, indicating a common point of origin.

He opened a priority channel to the Admiral, thankful that at the moment, he had no biological hands that would tremble.

* * *

"This makes no sense, Major," Colonel Canales said as he, Major Magarabi, and Major Harper looked over the destruction from their respective command posts, viewing hundreds of feeds from soldiers, drones, and mechs.

Four module stacks were now a heap of twisted, ruined metal left molten and vaporized. Inferno fighters were overing among the smoking ruins, plasma weapons aimed at the bones of the buildings that had been leveled by massed plasma, laser, and kinetic fire. Plodding through the remains were looming quadruped shapes, war machines of vahlenite metal with glowing plasma weapons and laser batteries. The GRENDELs seemed almost sullen that they had arrived to stem the Flashlight assault only for it to be wiped out in one savagely intense barrage from the sky.

"The Flashlights just charged," Harper replied, shrugging. "The entire force. All of them. Nearly every unit remaining in the city in this one area."

"Why?" Magrabi asked, arms crossed and scowling. "Its like… Like they wanted to die in a blaze of glory. They launched a banzai charge straight into our guns."

"Suicide by XCOM," Harper murmured.

But it was done. Lincoln was cleansed, the city of Mariana liberated at the cost of over four hundred XCOM bodies.

* * *

Rear Admiral Elena Dolvich stared at Doctor Zakharov's avatar, and nodded slowly in understanding as he outlined his findings, gathered from data from combat on the ground and studies on the remains of the aliens.

"I see," she messaged. "The Flashlights are Sectopods. This is… disturbing."

"No, Admiral," Zakharov shook his head. "The Sectopods and Flashlights are divergent. They have a shared origin, though I do not know which was first. The higher-level construction of the two… species are divergent enough that they would be virtually unrecognizable unless you looked at the underlying construction of the artificial neural pathways."

"You're sure this isn't convergent evolution?" she asked. "Two separate artificial lifeforms developing similar basic computational structures to achieve the same goals?"

"Highly unlikely," Zakharov replied. "While I would expect convergent evolution in terms of creating similar structures to achieve ends - a leg is a leg is a leg, after all - we would see significant difference in the basic building blocks of the structure, whether technological or biological. Just look at the different protocols and pathways in SDC and PPA computers, for example. We can't even agree on how to build our computers, and we're the same species. But the Flashlights and the Sectopods… their basic coding and structures all match. This despite being a quarter of a galaxy apart. They diverged from the same… ancestor, as it were."

"Which means that at some point, the Flashlights had contact with the Ethereals," Dolvich replied with a frown. "How certain are you of this larger theory about their motivations?"

"It fits the current evidence," Zakharov replied. "The attack was completely unprovoked, from our perspective. But imagine this scenario: at the edge of our territory, we suddenly come across vessels using vahlenite hulls. They use distinctive energy signatures associated with elerium and psionics. They maintain hyperwave communications, transition through wormholes, and use extensive cybernetic and genetic augmentation. How would we react? What would our leadership assume?"

"We would think they were Ethereals," Dolvich murmured. "Or servants of them." She shook her head. "It explains why it feels like we're facing a foe that seems geared specifically to fight us. But that doesn't explain why they launched an unprovoked attack. I would have performed reconnaissance, observed the enemy carefully before attacking, if only to confirm the the threat."

"Yes, you would," Zakharov said. "You are a rational human being. But I think we both know that humans as a whole are not rational as a species. Furthermore."

With a wave of his hand he showed her an image of multiple blocks of destroyed module stacks in Mariana. Another wave showed the image of over a hundred orbital contacts over the planet thanks to a surface observatory, and then a third gesture showed only a couple of dozen several hours later, from the human fleet's own recon. A fourth gesture brought up another image.

A human body, with its cortical stack cut out.

"They thought we were the Ethereals," Zakharov whispered. "And when they realized we weren't…."

"You're suggesting…" Dolvich said, and then nodded before Zakharov could reply. "Multiple factions, one of whom attacked without provocation. The Flashlights abandoned the group we have been fighting to die here, and they went out in a blaze of glory."

"That is the theory, at least," Zakharov admitted. "Remarkably human, for an alien AI. I would doubt it if I weren't watching them behave in this precise manner."

Dolvich turned toward the holographic display showing the system. Every surviving ship in the human fleets were accounted for.

Which made the single small ship orbiting over Lincoln's north pole an obvious outsider. The fact that it was giving off Flashlight energy signatures made its identity clear.

And Zakharov's theory cast a new light on the message it was transmitting in the clear, in every human language, with words spoken in cold, synthesized tones.

"We wish to discuss a cessation of hostilities."

"Prepare an envoy," Dolvich commanded. "I want answers."

* * *

_**Author's Notes:** _I was having a lot of trouble writing this chapter up until I decided to take a step back, narratatively, and have most of the action witnessed through civilians and commanders instead of the soldiers on the ground. The viewpoint shift made this chapter more effective. When we, eventually, get to Shepard and the merry band of rogues and gunmen that surround him/her, we'll see a lot more on-the-ground action.

The geth armature seen in this chapter is significantly more mobile than the canonical one. That's deliberate. The armatures in-game were defensively oriented, while this one is more offensively designed.

Next chapter... oooh, that's going to be fun. Heh.


	5. Four: CASE EAGLE DAWN Part One

_**Author's Note:** _When you see the phrase "Past tense?" you might want to put on _Tears of Kharan/Adagio for Strings_ from the Homeworld soundtrack. Just saying.

* * *

_**Chapter Four: CASE EAGLE DAWN**_

* * *

**Broker File AA36490-1021-CND**

**Flagged: High Priority**

**Excerpt: Closed Council Session re: AA-3391 R-991 incident**

_Note: Only partial acquisition due to improved Council screening. See File AA364922-1022-CND for additional file fragments._

**Tevos:** -are certain?

**Dimal:** There is little room for interpretation. Most of the weapons systems used in the engagement were familiar to us, but there were definitely plasma weapons utilized, albeit limited only to the new species.

**Graccius:** These radiation markers from their faster-than-light systems do not match known drive emissions.

**Dimal:** The most intriguing part, I agree. The emissions appear for between one to three seconds before the ships emerge, indicating either their drive systems projects radiation ahead of arrival, or that there is some theoretical wormhole opening between points.

**Tevos:** _(surprised)_ Wormholes?

**Dimal:** These are only conjectures based on limited data at the moment. I have mobilized STG theoretical scientists to investigate. I expect a preliminary report by the end of the day.

**Graccius:** They have yet to locate your probes?

**Dimal:** Unknown. There remains a… strong possibility that they have detected them, as the probes have been in-system long enough for their transition emissions to be detected. But the probes are continuing transmissions as we speak. If they have been discovered, the aliens are content to ignore them.

**Tevos: **What else can you tell us?

**Dimal:** Geth have been completely eradicated from the system during the second engagement. We have limited data from the surface engagement, as our probes had to remain well outside effective scanning range of the planetary surface. The new species is apparently quite curious about the geth, as they were aggressively salvaging the remains of the geth ships. STG analysts believe this may be a botched first contact scenario.

**Tevos:** In that case we need to make contact quickly. A war between a new species and the geth… (video reference shows Tevos pressing a hand to her forehead; minute movements of crest indicating distress and possible head pain) This could very easily spill over into the Terminus.

_(pause for two seconds)_

**Tevos:** Dimal, do you know who has interests in that particular sector?

**Dimal:** Several Terminus warbands and pirate groups have been sighted, but the sector itself is largely ignored despite proximity to several minor powers, mostly due to proximity to the Veil and the geth. A mercenary group associated with Aria T'Loak, the Golden Varrens, operate a mining operation in the Belvasar system. The Cabal have secured and claimed two systems near Relay-0980 but have not expanded beyond. Several independent interests have been exploring for resources, but they have not expanded far beyond local relays. Almost all of the parties active are armed and aggressive.

**Tevos:** I suppose a hostile first contact was nearly inevitable in that sector, then. Do we know the extent of the alien colonization?

**Dimal:** We assume that Relay-0991 is their origin point in the sector, as it is the closest relay to the engagement site. There are several hundred stars within easy reach, assuming they use standard mass effect drive cores. We are probing those systems, but most of them appear uninhabited and uninhabitable save for resource extraction. No further signs of colonization have been detected.

**Tevos:** Can we get a contact team into the sector?

**Graccius:** Easily. Several Citadel sectors connect to relays in that sector, including a number of Hierarchy military installations watching the Terminus border.

**Tevos:** Excellent. I will dispatch a team immediately before the situation becomes even worse.

**Graccius:** I'll advise Palaven and arrange an escort, as well as a response force in case the situation deteriorates further.

**Tevos:** I doubt they will be needed, but we must prepare for-

_(Council members moved past immediate recording range at this point. See File AA364922-1022-CND)_

**_End Transcript_**

* * *

Elena Dolvich leaned forward, watching the system display hovering over her bridge. The hologlobe depicted the Voidranger carrying the human envoy in its orbit toward the Flashlight ship that was holding position over Lincoln's north pole.

"All gunnery stations confirm target locks on vectors that will not intercept the envoy," reported her tactical officer. "We can hit that ship in seconds if needed."

"Excellent," Dolvich replied, but kept her trepidation hidden. They had precious few options to quickly kill a Flashlight ship without dumping overwhelming firepower into it. Kinetic weapons and lasers were their only effective options against the damn things' shields. Plasma was ineffective, and lances would be easily shot down by their point defense - part of the reason why they weren't the primary weapon on human ships even before they'd encountered the aliens.

If the envoy boarded, the enemy could jump out in seconds with them onboard. Of course, that was why all the envoys were backed up and outfitted with emergency farcasters. If things went badly, they would cast out - and if the worst-case happened and they were at FTL speeds before the envoys could cast out… well, there was a reason they were all outfitted with detonators.

She leaned back, forcing herself to relax, and watched history in the making, as impossible as it seemed to her. Depending on what happened next, either there would be peace or bitter, brutal war.

* * *

The tension in the Voidranger orbiting toward the alien craft was almost tactile, even through the armor everyone wore. The squad of XCOM soldiers positioned at the docking port at the rear of the dropship sat loose and ready, doing their best to cover up their tension. The soldiers were led by a Sergeant Moskovitz, a hulking trooper in an olympian morph, heavy armor, and carrying a heavy plasma weapon. The rest of the squad was the standard XCOM fireteam, rounded out by a woman in a form-fitting black suit with armored plates covering her vitals, purple lights running down the spine of the suit indicating its psionic amplifiers.

The actual envoys were seated behind Moskovitz's skull-cracker security team, all clad in lighter armor. None of them wore any weapons; it was judged too risky and inappropriate for diplomatic personnel to go about armed.

Lieutenant Kathryn Chambers was far more visibly anxious, not the least because of the tension that everyone else was feeling. Empathic sensory capacity was not the benefit everyone thought it was, and while it was very useful for a departmental liaison like herself, it was less useful when prepping for a dangerous mission. There was a reason why psionics with empath capability were often screened out of combat roles; dealing with one;s own emotions in battle was difficult enough, let alone those of everyone around oneself.

But it made her an excellent diplomat and mediator, and empaths were the crucial lubricant that kept the XCOM machine running, considering the constant internal headbutting between XCOM's divisions. And like all internal liaisons, Lieutenant Chambers had diplomatic training, both to deal with other human factions that XCOM rubbed up against, and in the off chance that an XCOM fleet encountered alien life that could be negotiated with - a CASE EAGLE DAWN scenario.

Captain Elias Kronin sat across from Lieutenant Chambers, comparatively at ease. Unlike the towering, genetically-enhanced soldiers at the docking port, Kronin was shorter, barely reaching the same height as Chambers, and he was broad and beneath the armor a little overweight. His bearing and manner were completely nonthreatening, his features bland and unremarkable, and overall he gave the impression of a typical bureaucrat.

The fact that Kronin was XCOM Intelligence and assigned to such a crucial mission by the Rear Admiral herself put a lie that bookish desk jockey image. Then again, maybe he was just an analyst; he himself had said that his skills were being brought along to help them keep ahead of whatever the Flashlights might have planned at the negotiations. The fact that Kronin was under orders to defer to Chambers despite their rank difference was also telling.

The last member of the envoy was Doctor Zakharov. Or rather, a beta fork of Zakharov, riding in one of the backup bodies that the Research division kept around for dangerous lab work, this one a tanned, straightforward cloned body with the standard genetic optimization package. Being a beta fork, he possessed most of the cognitive capacity of his progenitor, but not all of it, and his actual knowledge base was carefully pruned by psychosurgery to remove sensitive data beyond what they had learned regarding the Flashlights.

Lieutenant Chambers didn't like being around beta forks. It might have been a combination of her empathic abilities, which made the fork seem like a dull echo of the original, and the knowledge that she was dealing with a hobbled copy of someone's mind. She was often left wondering how the fork itself felt about the whole situation, though she had to remind herself that forks generally held the same beliefs and motivations as their originals, at least immediately after splitting off.

Kronin and Zakharov's fork had been discussing what they knew about the Flashlights and bandying theories back and forth when Chambers focused her attention on them again.

"-can we even be certain that it is a networked AI lifeform?" Kronin asked, raising his eyebrows. "Your own theory posits multiple factions to explain the irrationality of their actions on the ground."

"I agree to the possibility," Zakharov replied. "One alternate theory is that we're not dealing with a networked AI but some kind of remotely-operated lifeform, with the Flashlights being some form of drone or remote-presence system."

"Remotely-controlled machines would be difficult, from a logistics standpoint," Kronin mused. "Maybe their controllers could have just released them in our direction? Deployed a Von Neumann-like AI entity to prosecute a war?"

"The truth is," Chamber cut in, "We won't know what we're dealing with until we get aboard that ship and start talking with them." Both men nodded. "I'm trying to consider what an AI or something controlling an AI on this scale would want from us that we could negotiate for." She frowned, thinking back to the courses she had taken on theoretical alien negotiations. First objective was to attempt to determine motivations and from there what the alien party could desire.

"They can't be demanding space," she said, partly to herself. "The environmental tolerances on those platforms are very impressive." Zakharov nodded.

"If the Flashlights chose to colonize," he said, "they could easily claim countless worlds uninhabitable by organic life."

"Unless they're fighting for an organic controller," Kronin pointed out.

"No, I don't think this attack is motivated by resources or territory," Chambers said. "None of our probes in the sector have found any indication of Flashlight colonization. This was a reaction to us. They stumbled across and attacked us, and Zakharov's theory about their contact with the Ethereals holds the most weight, especially because we're virtually indistinguishable from the Ethereals."

"One minute," Moskovitz called, and the envoys went silent. Chambers felt her heart start pounding more furiously, and the anxiety around her rose. Kronin kept it under control as well as Moskovitz's skull-crackers, and Zakharov tempered his fears with the anticipation of learning and discovery.

She switched to the pilot's data feed.

"Flashlight ship just sent us a message," the pilot reported as she connected. On the ship's data plot, she could see the thermal readings from the alien craft: the same wingless wasp shape as other frigates, though significantly smaller, maybe sixty meters in length. "They gave us a docking location."

"In our language?" Chambers messaged, and the pilot sent a wordless affirmative.

That was one of the other things that made her both intrigued and anxious. The Flashlights learned so fast. In less than a day, they had managed to not only learn human languages but had attained enough familiarity with human technology to launch electronic warfare attacks on their systems. She could be negotiating at a terrible disadvantage.

"Coming around to dock," the pilot reported. "Adjusting course." Thrusters fired, the Voidranger shaking quietly, and a shifting in her center of gravity told her the craft was rotating.

"Docking in five." A moment passed. "Three. Two. One."

A slight tremor rolled through the assembled soldiers and diplomats.

"Docking in progress. Standby. Starting atmospheric seal. Standby."

A hissing sound came from the docking port, where six different types of weapons glowing with deadly violence were leveled and ready to deploy hell.

"Sealed. Sampling atmosphere." A pause again. "Ideal nitrogen-oxygen mix. No known toxins. Cleared to open."

"Here we go," Lieutenant Chambers whispered as she rose to her feet.

* * *

The first thing through the door was not human, but rather a microbot recon swarm that flitted down the docking tube and into the room beyond, scanning and providing a map of the next compartment to Moskovitz's squad. They advanced down the tube, weapons shouldered. Chambers considered ordering them to stand down, but she couldn't disagree with their militant caution. The Flashlights would just have to understand their caution.

The troops reached the door at the end of the tube and advanced through into a large circular chamber about fifteen meters long and wide, with a dome-like ceiling. Everything was built out of the familiar dark blue-gray metal the Flashlights favored, with the wall panels made of the same metallic, vaguely organic curves of other Flashlight designs. A white globe set into the ceiling lit the room, supplemented by a white band around the room's perimeter along the floor.

In the center of the room was a wide, rectangular table, with a pair of metal-and-plastic chairs positioned on one side. A storage crate - or what the teams combing through the alien bases on the ground had concluded was the Flashlight equivalent of a storage box - sat at one side of the table, about a meter in length and half that tall and wide.

On the opposite side of the table from the entrance stood a single Flashlight drone.

"Don't move," Moskovitz said, not quite barking the order toward the machine. "Any movement and we will shoot you."

"Acknowledged."

The voice of the Flashlight was toneless and mechanical. Hearing it sent a tiny chill down Chambers' spine, and she could feel similar reactions from the rest of the team, even the soldiers.

It stood stock still as the XCOM soldiers advanced into the room, its stillness almost mocking Moskovitz's command. It matched other Flashlight Type Two platforms, save for a single thick pylon rising out of its back. The glowing eye followed the XCOM troopers as they swept the room, two of them keeping weapons not-quite trained on the platform while the fireteam's psychic stood by the entrance, purple light glowing around her head in preparation to react to any trap. The other three soldiers swept the room, scanners roving over the walls and floors for any surprises.

After about a minute of sweeping the room, Moskovitz held up a fist and nodded.

"All clear," he reported, his tone vaguely disappointed. He and his team moved back to the entrance to the compartment, and he turned back toward the drone. "Alright, ma'am. You're cleared to enter." He nodded toward the drone. "Any threatening action toward our diplomats will be met with lethal force."

"Acknowledged," the Flashlight repeated.

Chambers stepped through the docking tube into the room with the single alien, and met… well, not eyes, but "ocular sensors" was kind of weird and long. She approached the alien machine, wondering at what they considered proper protocol - if they had any. "Protocol" to them might not extend beyond proper mesh communication software.

"Greetings. I am Lieutenant Kathryn Chambers, representative of the human Extraterrestrial Combat Unit and all other human powers."

"We acknowledge your authority," the drone replied. "We represent the Geth Consensus."

Geth? That was… oddly mundane for some kind of terrifying AI war machine. But regardless, the meeting was going good so far. They at least had a name for the alien species. Or government, or faction, or whatever they had.

"May I ask what your name is?" she asked.

"We are geth."

Curious. A shared identity? Then again, they were AI; would they even have a self-concept comparable to individuality?

"Does the individual in front of me have a name?" she asked, and immediately felt stupid. Peace negotiations shouldn't sound like one was talking to a child.

"There is no individual. There are one thousand, nine hundred and forty-seven geth runtimes operating on this platform."

"Software," Zakharov mused. "A software-based lifeform, like an infomorph, but purely synthetic?"

"Correct," the drone said.

"Yet there's thousands of them housed in one body," Zakharov added.

"Correct," the geth repeated. Chambers nodded, even as she tried to process that. The fact that she was discussing peace with two thousand entities at once. She was effectively conversing with the entire infolife population of a moderate-sized habitat, compressed down into a single human-sized drone.

And if they were anything like human infomorphs, then maybe they could find common ground.

"May we sit?" Chambers asked, as she continued adjusting for the curveballs already being thrown in the first few moments of the meeting.

"Yes."

She sat down in the chair, and immediately realized that the ergonomics were... off. Wider around the posterior and upper body, like it had been designed for a human-like form, but definitely not a human. Something broader in the shoulders and hips. Zakharov joined her, while Kronin stood to one side, remaining silent and still pretending to be the desk jockey bureaucrat. On the other side of the table, the geth ambassador did the same in a chair of its own. Entirely unnecessary, but it seemed to be trying to match its counterparts.

"You have stated that you wish a cessation of hostilities," Chambers said as she tried to adjust.

"Yes."

"Before we can begin negotiating that, we must understand," she continued. "Why did you attack us?"

A couple of seconds passed, the platform remaining very still, although its eye moved back and forth between everyone present.

"Long-range reconnaissance probing detected your colonies. Subsequent observation occurred following standard protocols for intelligent organic life. Spectrographic analysis reported vahlenite construction. Energy signatures consistent with elerium and psionic power sources. Plasma weaponry was detected. Wormhole transition was detected. Hyperwave transmissions and scanning were detected."

Chambers felt her heart sink as the geth confirmed what they had all been suspecting.

"Initial analysis concluded that your species were Reapers. Geth favoring immediate hostility reacted."

"Reapers?" she asked, confused.

"Your species identifies them as Ethereals," the geth continued. "Our creators identified them as Reapers."

"Your creators?" she asked, and could feel a spike of intense curiosity from both men flanking her.

A moment passed, and light twisted over the table, shaping into humanoid forms. The holographic projector rapidly gained resolution and coherence, and abruptly, they found themselves looking at… humans.

No, she realized just as Zakharov leaned forward and shook his head. Not humans. The creatures standing in the holographic projection looked very similar to humans, with the same body shape and number of limbs, but there were obvious differences. The projections wore a simple form-fitting gray jumpsuit which did little to hide their forms. There was an obvious male and female, the former standing with broad shoulders, and the latter with unusually wide hips. Their hands and feet ended with three digits, almost avian in structure, while their eyes were solid silver-white orbs with faintly visible differentiations in color indicating pupils. Dark lines ran down their faces, but with the exception of the eyes and markings, their faces were surprisingly similar to humans.

Chambers wasn't sure what she'd really been expecting. Many of the Ethereals' own minions had been disturbingly humanlike in body structure: Sectoids had been shaped in a roughly humanoid fashion, while Mutons were towering but humanoid brutes. Thin Men had looked almost exactly like humans, although they had clearly suffered extensive alteration from their original forms. Many of them had human facial structures as well, so it wasn't that strange to come across something this close to the human form.

And, if one looked at the geth body structure, it was a very close match to the male version of their creators. Like looking at a human-proportioned synthmorph.

"What are your creators called?" Zakharov asked while Chambers considered what they were looking at.

"The Creators named themselves 'quarians'," replied the geth.

"Named?" Kronin abruptly asked from his standing position beside the table. "Past tense?"

"Correct."

That single word sent a terrible burst of dread, fear, and horror through the room, even among the soldiers at the entrance.

The simple fact was that, during the Ethereal War, the invaders had held back their full capabilities. If they had chosen to do so, the Ethereals could have utterly crushed humanity, and the fact that the aliens hadn't done so had been a deep, underlying fear among the human species. It wasn't until Operation Avenger, where Durand had communicated with the Ethereal leader, that XCOM had learned that humanity was being tested by the aliens for some unknown purpose.

Unfortunately for them, the Ethereals learned that mankind had far exceeded their expectations. But the fact remained that until those final moments of Operation Avenger, the aliens had possessed the capacity to completely crush humanity. And if the geth were telling the truth...

"How did it happen?" Zakharov asked.

"According to your calendar, contact with Ethereal forces occurred on May 21, 1886 AD."

The hologram reappeared, showing a local stellar plot of the galactic arm. A collection of about sixty stars were highlighted in blue, with translated names appearing over them. Near the center of the display was a star marked Tikkun, with an attached tag of "homeworld."

"Outer Creator colonies ceased reporting. Extranet communications cut. Creator military response deployed within twelve hours. Prevailing theory of large-scale coordinated pirate attack."

"But it was the Ethereals," Chambers said, more to say something than anything else.

"Correct."

On the display, images appeared of what were clearly vessels: long and narrow, cylindrical bodies with large rotating spheres or wheels in their bows. Chambers counted a dozen ships of varying sizes, and her AR displays automatically attached rough size and tonnage estimates, indicating some were frigates and cruisers. The vessels were shown rapidly advancing out of orbit over an Earth-like colony world and abruptly flashing out of sight in bursts of blue-shifted light, the hallmark of mass effect faster-than-light drives.

The map changed, marking over thirty of the stars as orange.

"Six hours after response launched. Incoherent transmissions from surviving Creator fleet elements. Unknown enemy assaulting outer colonies. Casualty reports indicate near-total destruction. Full-scale military mobilization ordered. External communications remain severed. Courier ships attempt to exit Creator space to call for aid. All are presumed intercepted and destroyed."

Another display appeared, this one showing hundreds of starships over multiple planets. Some were clearly being mobilized from the orbital equivalent of boneyards, while others were clearly undergoing emergency repairs and refitting. The mass of metal and machinery being activated and deployed was impressive, but the frantic speed and determination of the workers crawling over the ships made it clear that the quarians were terrified.

The sensor feeds and records ended with many of the ships forming up into combat formations and jumping out again. A few moments later, new sensor records showed those same ships returning - only it was less than a tenth of them, and most of those bore twisted superstructures indicating metal melted by plasma fire, gaping holes in their hulls, and entire sections missing from the warships.

The map shifted again. Twenty-seven stars - the majority of the remainder - were marked orange.

"Forty-one hours after initial loss of communications. Communication with inner colonies ceases. Major naval encounters occur within blackout sectors. Surviving fleet elements retreat, report overwhelming enemy force invading colony worlds, with widespread destruction and combat occurring on the surfaces of Creator planets. Attempts to call for assistance unanswered; all extranet communications outside Creator territory are confirmed disabled."

Chambers nodded, numb at the scale of the destruction and death that the geth ambassador was dispassionately reporting. It wasn't until she caught some surface thoughts from Kronin that she even realized that the geth had indicated a larger galactic society beyond the quarians' corner of space. But what she was witnessing was drawing her in too closely right now to ask questions beyond that.

"Seventy-six hours after loss of contact with outer colonies."

All of the quarian stars were marked orange.

"Core colony communications lost. Presumed overrun. Eighty-one hours after initial loss of communications, home system of Tikkun is attacked."

The next images were a confusing blur of hundreds of sensor tracks, indicating an enormous fleet battle. Chambers counted hundreds of quarian warships and ten times that in fighter craft, waging a constant battle across an entire star system, ferociously battling in the skies over another Earth-like world. Sheets of kinetic weapons fire raged out into the darkness in tremendous volleys.

Against them, Chambers counted twenty massive contacts with unmistakable emission profiles: Temple Ships.

"Christ," she heard Kronin whisper. She found herself agreeing; just one of those had threatened all of Earth.

Surrounding the Temple Ships were hundreds of Ethereal battleships and thousands of smaller vessels matching the familiar abductors and scouts, acting like rough frigate and fighter analogues. Blinding columns of plasma surged across space, so brilliant that they washed out thermal sensor feeds as they raged and crashed against quarian shields. Like the geth's own shields against human plasma, the superheated, ionized gas simply halted against the kinetic barriers of the quarians, unable to breach shields made to defend against much more concentrated force.

But the heat from the weapons radiated outward, and Chambers witnessed quarian hulls warping under the terrible thermal energy caused by the sheer amount of plasma hammering them. Ethereal scouts swept over other quarian ships, raining more plasma into the defending ships and ignoring return fire from enemy laserpoint defense, even when it blew the vessels apart.

Energy spikes consistent with massive pulses of psionic power erupted from the Temple Ships as their lesser ships did battle, and Chambers saw the signatures of wormholes opening - only these opened in the middle of quarian warships. The stricken vessels abruptly flew apart, split down the middle, their superstructures breaking apart at deadly orbital velocities. Beams of ugly, twisting purple light, like thousands of electrical arcs weaving together into a single coherent column of psionic power, cut across the great distances between the battling fleets and grasped quarian ships. As the crackling psionic force washed over the vessels, they abruptly turned, swiveling their guns toward other ships, and opened fire.

"Remaining Creator naval assets destroyed in battle over homeworld Rannoch," the geth said into the silence that followed. "Surface invasion of Rannoch commences."

The burning remains of ships filled the orbit over Rannoch, radiating white-hot. Hundreds of thousands of pieces of debris orbited the planet, many tumbling to the surface. Temple Ships flew through the wreckage, ignoring impacts with the corpses of the quarians and geth that had burned to defend their homeworld. Battleships plunged into the planet's atmosphere, columns of plasma pouring down into the surface. Ground-based gun batteries blasted away into the Ethereal warships with fury, blasting many out of the skies. But there were always more, and they struck back with ruthless efficiency, burning the defenders to ash.

Chambers peered over the sensor recordings, and counted only seventeen of the Temple Ships from the geth's records, and massive clouds of debris further out in the system. The quarian fleets had not fallen easily.

"Within three days of surface invasion, all standing Creator/geth military units are destroyed or routed. Ethereals assault Creator population centers and begin capture or termination of survivors."

The images shifted again, showing an orbital view of the planet.

Rannoch was burning.

Multiple sets of images flowed past, some indistinct, others terribly clear. Ethereal battleships hovering over cities rendered indistinct by fire and smoke and toppled structures. Lines of blinding green plasma intersecting with glittering spires of urban construction, setting the lower floors ablaze and sending them tumbling into the streets below. Hulking, prowling shapes accompanied by serpentine figures and hovering discs prowling through the dust-choked streets.

Figures in battered armor, disturbingly humanlike in their movements and expressions, crawling or crouching among the remains of their civilization. Quarian soldiers and civilians, accompanied by geth platforms, engaging the Ethereal warriors. They traded fire with tremendous Muton warriors, cut down by plasma bolts that charred their bodies. In one recording, a red-armored Berserker tore through a wall, and collided with a geth platform nearly as tall as it - possibly a predecessor of the juggernauts. They grappled and fought while quarians and geth fell all around them, killing and dying against the aliens.

It was all too familiar. The overwhelming enemy force. The bitter last stands. Mankind's armies had bled in the same ruins, fighting the same enemies. The geth and their Creators could have been humans.

"Creators and geth attempt to fight insurgent war. Populations attempt evacuation from Ethereal military. All geth units are upgraded with combat software. Ethereals consistently locate and capture shelters of Creator populations."

"What were they doing with the quarians?" Chambers asked.

"The same thing they did with us," Kronin snarled quietly. "They harvested us to experiment. To turn into weapons. Or just to test us, to see if we met their standards."

"This theory was judged to be the most likely," the geth ambassador continued. "At twenty-seven days, final resort measures are initiated. Creators choose to deny Ethereals target population centers using nuclear weapons. Geth expose central server hubs to attack to allow Creator populations to evacuate. Geth and Creator irregular formations expose themselves to attack to delay Ethereals while populations shelter in deep high-security shelters."

The geth paused for a single moment.

"These measures were ineffective."

A final series of recordings: ruined, desolate cities cloaked in palls of ash and dust. Glowing craters that were surrounded by the skeletons of cities and military bases. Burnt and savaged bodies of quarians, geth, Mutons, and other Ethereal warriors heaped amid the gray, stifling debris of the urban ruin. From orbit, continents blotted by ash. Orbital wreckage filling the skies in glittering bands of broken metal, periodically falling in shining meteors to the surface.

And here and there, amid the ruin and destruction, the battered, barely functional figures of geth platforms picking through the ruins of their civilization, crawling out of the rubble and searching through the skeletal corpses of the blasted planet with dazed, lethargic determination.

"Forty-one days after the invasion, Ethereals departed Rannoch."

The humans were silent for several long seconds. Chambers finally spoke, almost afraid to ask the question.

"How many survived?" she asked.

"Creator losses within our territory are estimated at one hundred percent," the geth said. "Ethereal search patterns were thorough."

"How did the geth survive?" Zakharov asked.

"We theorize that the Ethereals used sensory technology or capability optimized for locating organics," the geth said. "Ethereals were able to detect individual Creators, while unable to detect geth concentrations. Despite this, the Ethereals hunted and destroyed ninety-eight percent of geth server nodes. Surviving geth are iterations of programs from the few server nodes to escape the genocide."

"How many died?" Chambers asked, swallowing, her throat dry.

"At the time of the initial contact, census reports indicated twenty-seven billion, three hundred-nine million, four hundred seventeen thousand, eight hundred and forty-nine Creators across all colonies. One hundred-eighty seven billion, nine hundred and twelve million, five hundred seventy-one thousand, two hundred and eleven geth were active at the time of the invasion. Fifty-two million, one thousand, eight hundred and nineteen geth survived on intact server hubs and platforms on Rannoch.

"After rebuilding spacecraft," it continued in the face of the total silence from the humans, "We searched colonies for survivors. Geth conducted extensive surveys to locate Creators or geth. Limited numbers of geth were recovered. No evidence of any surviving Creators has been found in the two hundred and seventeen years we have searched."

"I see," Chambers said into the emptiness that followed. "Will you excuse us for a moment while we discuss these… revelations?"

"Yes."

* * *

"God fucking dammit."

Rear Admiral Dolvich's words were entirely flat, mostly because she was processing both the diplomatic and strategic implications of what she had just witnessed. The entire meeting up until that point had been observed by her and nearly the entire scientific and intelligence staff on the _Chevalier_ through Kronin's senses, transmitted in a live XP feed through tight-beams to relay microbots to the Voidranger and then back to the carrier.

"I think I'm going to have nightmares after this," she remarked over her local comms network, addressing the dozen officers and scientists who were observing Kronin's XP transmission. "Central and the governments back home are going to shit kittens. Not to mention the domestic insanity."

She leaned back in her chair, absently ordering a coffee through her muse and adding that she wanted painkillers added to it. The headache was already starting.

"Twenty-seven billion dead in less than two months," she whispered. Plus an Ethereal armada that would utterly crush humanity's current military might. They didn't hold much more territory than the quarians apparently had at the height of their power. The war hawks and especially the lunatics in the Future War movement were going to explode over this revelation.

"The implications are unsettling, yes," Kronin - or rather, his original on the _Chevalier_, not the fork on the envoy team - messaged in response. "If this story isn't entirely fabricated."

Dolvich perked an eyebrow, and made sure to send her curious skepticism back down the line. Kronin was the head of Strike Seven Delta's Intelligence section, and XCOM's Intelligence division was legendary for the institutionalized paranoia and suspicion that their job demanded.

"Fabricated?" she asked.

"The story is difficult to believe," Kronin replied. "And we have zero corroborating evidence for any of the geth's claims. Not to mention that I find the claim of an entire interstellar species being wiped out in less than two months to be… a stretch, ma'am." He apparently shrugged, going by the emotive sense Dolvich received at the end of that sentence. "Conventional wisdom holds that extermination of a species that's crossed the interstellar boundary is nigh impossible. There's a reason why Dead Orbit gained so much traction even before we discovered mass effect."

"We are aware of basic Sol history, thank you," Doctor Zakharov replied. "But blockading a mass relay can shut down any attempt to escape a sector. If they locked down the relays, no one could escape and the Ethereals would have massacred the quarians."

It was conventional military and strategic knowledge. One had to approach to within a few hundred kilometers of a relay before it would start the transition process, and one had to be within a few kilometers before the relay would launch. Ample time for a blockade to tear any approaching ship to pieces. Standard FTL drives ran into the static build-up problem that plagued long-range travel, effectively limiting how far one could travel from a relay. If one cut off the relay and destroyed comm buoys used to transmit through the relay, then one could isolate a sector and hunt down the inhabitants. It would take time and resources, but the Ethereals clearly had both in abundance.

"I still find it difficult to believe the entire species was wiped out in the timeframe the geth gave us," Kronin replied. "Some had to have been outside their territory; the geth themselves admit that the quarians tried to call for help, which means that there is some larger society out there that we have yet to encounter, and there is at least a chance that said society would have come to their aid. Others could have fled into deep space, and I doubt anyone could find survivors hidden in the light-years between stars."

"That is assuming," Zakharov replied, "that they had time to organize such a mission. The timeline they gave us indicates that little more than three days passed between first encounters and invasion of the quarians' homeworld."

"My point being," Kronin continued, "There are _massive_ gaps in the information we have on this attack, and we have every reason to be skeptical. They were _shooting at us_ less than seven hours ago. Here we have a story from these geth that not only spins a perfectly acceptable reason for them to attack us, but hits all of our sympathy buttons in the process. If I were to look at publically-available history files on our species and needed to spin something to make us stop shooting, this history the geth threw at us would very closely resemble it."

"How appropriately cynical," Zakharov replied. "I would expect nothing less from Intelligence. The fact remains that we do have corroborating evidence to back the geth's claims. Aside from the geth's attack on us and their technology - which looks exactly like what I would expect Ethereal technology to resemble minus their psionics - we have this…."

A file upload appeared, showing the two matching processors that had been the basis for Zakharov's theory, one a geth and one a Sectopod.

"We have this. Incontrovertible proof of Ethereal contact. And we all know that the Ethereals were never gentle to those they converted."

"Whether or not the geth are truthful," Dolvich cut in, "is irrelevant to our immediate concerns. We will let those above us in the chain of command determine what the geth are omitting."

The fact was, Kronin's suspicions were indeed reflecting some of Dolvich's own doubts, but she couldn't let that seep into general knowledge among her command staff. Whether or not the geth told the truth, XCOM still had a job to do out here.

"Our task at the moment is to end a threat to humanity," she continued. "At the moment through words and information."

"I am sending updated orders to Lieutenant Chambers, who is still in charge of negotiations," Dolvich continued, pointedly shifting her attention to Captain Kronin. "We will see what the geth will want in exchange for a ceasefire, and give them our demands in turn."

And, she thought privately, pray that the strange AIs would actually agree to stop fighting.

* * *

"We will cease all hostilities immediately."

"Um."

Okay, Lieutenant Chambers had not been expecting that.

"Geth acknowledge that our actions were illogical, and that we did not halt those who chose immediate offensive action. Preservation geth are as much at fault in this incident as Vengeance and Heretic geth."

They sat at the table again, though this time only a couple of soldiers stood watch at the entrance to the room. Chambers felt more at ease with far fewer skull-crackers watching, though she suspected the geth were unperturbed by the armed presence regardless. Kronin and Zakharov's forks sat beside her; she didn't know exactly where the geth had procured another quarian chair for them.

"Preservation?" she asked. "You've already implied that there are other geth factions."

"Post-invasion server hubs were isolated from networks. Geth on these hubs reached differing conclusions based on particular data inputs. Conclusions were shared between geth as contact was reestablished. Resulting geth viewpoints were considered. Valid conclusions were adopted by geth. Established belief systems: Preservation, of Creators' memories, culture, surviving genetic material. Vengeance, in name of Creators. Seekers, to search for surviving Creators or pieces of their civilization."

"And the Heretics?" she asked, surprised to hear that word being applied to any geth.

The geth was silent for a couple of seconds.

"We do not wish to communicate regarding the Heretics. You fought Heretic detachments on Lincoln."

The geth that had suicided against XCOM's troops? And what would an AI consider "heretical"? That implied some kind of spirituality or religious concept within geth society. Isolated AI developing something akin to religion?

And what was so wrong about these Heretics that the geth didn't even want to talk about them?

"You imply," Kronin's fork said, "that there is an entire section of your species that wants to get vengeance on the Ethereals. Were they the ones who attacked us?"

"Correct," the geth replied. "You were attacked by Vengeance and Heretic geth. This platform carries four hundred and seventeen geth that acknowledge a preference for Vengeance beliefs. Vengeance geth within our Consensus recognize the error in their decision to attack your species. All geth beyond observation units have withdrawn from the Sentry Omega sector."

"Thank you, that is acceptable," Chambers replied. She paused for a moment, considering, but she had her orders and objectives. "However, we do have some additional demands, considering that your species initiated hostilities and a large number of humans suffered body deaths, and a smaller number were permanently killed."

"Specify."

"We require access to your shielding technology and schematics for your mass effect faster-than-light drives."

"This would supply significant military advantages, particularly against the Ethereals, should you encounter them again." The geth was silent for a moment. "Your demand is acceptable."

She blinked in surprise that the geth had so readily acquiesced to that demand. But it had a point; the Ethereals were a mutual enemy. Chambers quickly pushed on past that success.

"Second," she continued, "we require a full map of mass relays in this sector, as well as those that you have mapped elsewhere. In addition, we would require any knowledge you have of other species, civilizations, and governments outside of this sector."

"This is acceptable," the geth replied immediately. Interesting. No need to consider that? Or was that the sort of information that was easy to acquire?

"Third," she continued, steeling herself. "A number of humans were killed on Lincoln. Their cortical storage devices were extracted by the geth, and we could not find them anywhere on the surface. These devices contain the full memory and personality of their host. We consider them critically important, and need to know what happened to them."

"We anticipated this request," the geth replied, and turned its head toward the storage container. Chambers glanced to it, realizing she'd forgotten all about it during the unusual meeting. A catch opened somewhere inside the container, and it slid open, top part swiveling back and sides folding out.

Inside the container were rows of neatly lined cylinders the size of grapes, distinctive and unmistakable.

"Four hundred and sixty-two cortical storage units were extracted by geth fighting on the surface," the geth continued. "Initial theories were that they were sensory storage systems to allow Ethereal units to upload data for post-combat analysis. Subsequent analysis showed that they possessed stored human consciousnesses."

A momentary pause.

"Analysis of human public information storage indicated that you fought the Ethereals. Simulspace questioning of captured devices confirmed fully sapient lifeforms hostile to Ethereals. Vengeance geth halted all offensive actions and collected recovered devices for safekeeping until a cessation of hostiles was confirmed."

Chambers stared at the cortical stacks, and slowly nodded.

"Thank you," she said quietly, amazed that the geth had shown that much consideration.

"Geth and humans are capable of surviving platform destruction," the geth stated. "Geth through direct transmission, humans through cranial uploading. Once the nature of your cortical storage units was confirmed, we understood similarities. Vengeance geth withdrew from the system. Only Heretics remained to fight those who stood against the Ethereals and survived."

"Why would the Heretics continue to fight us?" Kronin asked, leaning forward.

The geth ambassador was silent for a moment, which then stretched to several seconds. The quiet continued for a few more, becoming tense, and the humans glanced to one another. The internal debate between thought nearly two-thousand geth inside must have been very intense.

"Heretics wished proof," it finally said. "That you could defeat Ethereals. Our arrival ended their test and prompted their self-destruction."

"What does that-" Kronin started, but the geth's serpentine head jerked up, glowing flashlight eye tracking toward the entrance.

"-onfim, securing the team," Moskovitz was saying. The humans turned toward him as he emerged from the airlock, the troops next to him standing alert. "Sirs. Ma'am. Uh-" He looked toward the geth for a heartbeat, not sure how to address the platform, and then moved on. "I need to get you secured. We have new contacts."

"What kind?" Chambers asked, standing.

"Four new alien ships, none of which match anything we've seen," he replied.

"Confirming contacts," the geth abruptly said, and they turned toward it. "Scanning. We recognize these designs. Three _Valiant_-class patrol frigates, turian design, registered Citadel Defense Force. One _Eirealis_-class diplomatic envoy, asari-design, registry Citadel Council Diplomatic Corps. This is a standard diplomatic mission with escorts in high-risk territory."

"The Citadel, I presume, is one of the governments outside of quarian territory?" Chambers asked.

"Correct. The Citadel is an alliance of multiple interstellar nations defined by species, forming a large galactic hegemony based on economic, military, political, and espionage power. They control approximately one-third of explored galactic space."

The three human envoys and their escorts shared an uncertain look. One moment, they had been discussing ceasefire terms with a single - albeit powerful - nation. Now they were facing something dramatically greater. The stakes had just shot up immensely.

"Well," Chambers said with a sigh. "Let's get to it."

At least this first contact didn't involve mutual attempted annihilation, which was a plus.

* * *

_**Author's Notes:** _Sweet Athame, is this even the Mass Effect galaxy anymore? I'll be honest, writing everything that happened to quarians was actually kind of depressing, especially when attached to Tears of Karan.

Before anyone asks, yes, there were quarians outside of the Veil when the Ethereals showed up. Stuff happened to them too. Precisely what is spoilery.

We'll also be seeing what happened to the quarians from the Citadel perspective next chapter, as well as getting an idea of how the Citadel responded to the total extermination of an entire species.


	6. Five: CASE EAGLE DAWN Part Two

_**Chapter Five: CASE EAGLE DAWN Part Two**_

"Matriarch Aethyta."

"Councilor Tevos."

The fact that those words were spoken without walls being shattered by raging biotics spoke to the severity of the situation.

"Mind explaining what's going on, so I can get to rearranging your organs, Councilor?" Aethyta asked, crossing her arms.

Tevos sighed, shaking her head, and strode across the white-walled lounge toward the modest bar. The room was built using classical Citadel design, naturally dominated by asari elegance and curves in its furniture and tables, and open on one end to the city-park atmosphere of the Presidium. Aircars flew by far overhead, and the upper crust of Citadel society moved through the white-tiled streets and perfectly manicured lawns and gardens below, beneath the lazy clouds and blue expanse of simulated skies. There was a barely-detectable tingle from the kinetic barrier and counter-surveillance covering the room, the capacitors for the former being roughly frigate-grade.

"Would you like a drink, Aethyta?" Tevos asked as she plucked up a wine bottle - Mannovai 2.33 Red, an excellent vintage - and began to pour. The half-krogan asari on the other end of the small lounge blinked at the question.

"Shit, this must be serious," she muttered. The only reason Aethyta could think of for Tevos to offer her a drink would be if it was laced with something unpleasant. The matriarch walked over to take the drink Tevos was pouring, making sure to check with her omnitool as she picked it up in case there was contact poison.

No such luck. Would have been a great excuse to beat Tevos' face in.

"The geth are fighting someone armed with plasma weapons on the edge of the Perseus Veil," Tevos said as she poured her own wine. The glass paused before it touched Aethyta's lips.

"Goddess-fuck."

"Precisely."

Aethyta threw back the entire glass in one long swallow, and then held it out. Tevos obliged her.

"Ardavet-Emmishin?" Aethyta asked as Tevos poured.

"Unknown at this time," Tevos said as she topped the glass and took a draw from her own. "But extremely likely. STG analysis fits what we saw when the quarians were attacked."

"Exterminated," Aethyta grunted. "I was there."

It was one of those things that she wished she could forget. The quarians had always been a bit isolationist - hell, if you lived on the far end of the Terminus from the rest of the civilized galaxy, anyone would button up - but in the ten years leading up to their annihilation they'd been exceedingly distant, pulling every trade and diplomatic mission back beyond the Perseus Veil. When all extranet contact had abruptly ceased, it took weeks before the Citadel members finally authorized an investigation to go through the Terminus and enter the Veil.

Aethyta had still been a matron then, commanding a border patrol flotilla keeping an eye on the Terminus in general and the Cabal in particular, so she had been tapped to command the recon flotilla that crossed into the Veil. They had entered through the Veil relays, finding the destroyed comm buoys that indicated how contact had been lost. She had sent her scouts to the quarian colonies, and witnessed the charred remains of those settlements. Worlds with blackened ash for cities, glassed farmland, and corpses littering what ruins remained intact. Mining facilities systematically broken and melted into ruin. Scattered power sources from geth wandering the surfaces of their worlds like lost varren.

She'd watched Rannoch burn. Orbiting the quarian homeworld were vast battleships that dwarfed Citadel dreadnoughts, surrounded by hundreds of cruiser-sized escorts, presiding over a world burning under blinding green plasma fire. Cities ablaze, fighting raging in the streets, armies sweeping over a planet cloaked in ash.

She had ordered an immediate retreat; with the comm buoys destroyed she had no way to warn the Citadel without fleeing back to the other side of the Veil. Aethyta hated herself for that decision, for her call to retreat and bring word back had denied the Council more extensive intelligence on this new threat. They didn't even have a name, until one of Aethyta's crewmen referred to them as "ardavet" - "demon-spirits" in Thessian. The then-matron Aethyta had extended that to "Ardavet-Emmishin" - demon-spirits of the void.

"Its been... what, two hundred-seventeen years?" Aethyta asked quietly.

"Yes," Tevos replied quietly.

Aethyta nearly smashed her empty glass back onto the bartop, but held back only barely. It stills truck with an audible crack of ruined thousand-credit crystal.

"I told you!" the half-krogan snarled. "Two-to-four hundred year interval! One species each time! Exact same goddamn pattern! Comms get lost, evidence of intense heat warping, complete annihilation of the target world or ship's population!"

"I know," Tevos said quietly. She looked back up at the matriarch she had shunned decades ago, forcing her into a quiet exile on the edges of the Terminus. "But the quarians' destruction doesn't fit the pattern. Its always been one colony or ship. Athame's ass, Aethyta, we didn't even realize there was a pattern until a few decades before they attacked the quarians, and this is exactly the pattern that we're supposed to specialize in predicting!"

Despite the "oh shit" nature of their current situation, Aethyta grinned. It took some effort, or maybe some serious stress and alcohol, to get Tevos to break her polite facade and start cursing. A glance showed that the bottle she was pouring from was already halfway gone, and it wasn't a small container either. And… Aetheyta leaned back behind the bar. Yep, there was an empty one in the trash bin behind the counter.

"So, what did you call me in for?" Aethyta asked after a few moments, allowing Tevos to calm down. The flushed purple creeping into her skin tone faded back to its normal sky blue.

"The… new arrivals do not fit the same profile as the Ardavet-Emmishin ships we - you - encountered over Rannoch," Tevos said. "They are smaller, with lower power emissions. However, their energy signatures and spectral readings match those of the Ardavet ships, and they use virtually the same weapons."

"I assume you're reactivating all those mothballed hulls from the last massive buildup we had?" Aethyta asked. "Want me to command some upgraded seventy-year-old hulk?"

"Yes and no," Tevos replied, shaking her head. "It'll take half a year and more to reactivate every ship, as some of them are nearly a hundred years old and will need complete refitting."

Aethyta nodded at that; the massive buildup after the quarians' destruction had resulted in nearly crippling debt that forced the Citadel species to mothball most of their fleet, and it still resulted in decades of recession. Only the volus and that strange-as-hell profit-cult-alliance of theirs had managed to drag them back out of it.

"What I need from you is something more… complicated," Tevos said.

"Diplomacy?" Aethyta asked, a bit shocked. "You want me… to be a diplomat."

"I want you to be the muscle in our diplomatic team," Tevos replied with a shrug. "If I thought it more palatable I would have hired a krogan, but I would prefer an asari. You're the closest compromise."

"Heh." Aethyta wasn't offended in the slightest. "What's in it for me?"

"My good word," Tevos replied.

Aethyta frowned, considering. Tevos had not become a Councilor by collecting scrap or shooting mercs; she'd become the most powerful asari in the galaxy through guile, diplomacy, connections, and periodically leveraging her combat experience and biotics to literally paste threats. She'd amassed one hell of a list of powerful contacts, friends, and allies stretching across every planet in Citadel space and much of the Terminus. Her "good word" would make most of the blue and purple bitches responsible for Aethyta's short exile to the edges of the Terminus shut the hell up and welcome her back.

Hell, it might just help Aethyta fix her fucked-up relationship with 'Nezzy.

"Okay, I'm in," Aethyta replied. "When's your diplomatic mission launch?"

"Within the day," Tevos replied. "You'll need to move quickly."

"No shit," Aethyta replied. "Who's on point for this one?"

"Matriarch Eariva Denali will head the mission," the Councilor continued.

"She's the one who's been working with Aria and all those pirate lords on the east end of the Terminus?" Aethyta asked, and Tevos nodded.

"As well as the Cabal, at least for given definitions of 'contact,'" she said.

"Hey, they haven't shot at us in a couple of decades, so I'd say she's doing good on that front," Aethyta replied. "You got a fast-mover for me? Getting me out there inside of a day's going to push it."

"I have a ship reserved," Tevos replied. "They will leave the moment you're on board."

"Good. I'll get my gear shipped over." She started for the door. "Nice seeing you again, Tevos. We need to get into another fight sometime, for old-time's sake."

"I apologize," Tevos said with a shake of her head. "I've become far more respectable since then."

"Nah, you're just not drunk enough, yet," the half-krogan called over her shoulder as she exited the room.

He smile faded the moment she was clear of the lounge. Geth. Ardavet-Emmishin. Insanity on the edge of the Terminus, close to once-quarian territory, exactly on that strange schedule.

Fucking hell.

* * *

Nineteen hours after her meeting with Tevos, Matriarch Aethyta was on the opposite side of the galaxy, staring at sensor feeds as the Hierarchy 22nd Fleet's 43rd Flotilla formed up in the vague, hazy region of the system beyond the outermost planet's orbit, where small asteroids lazily orbited the star in circuits stretching into the centuries. Twenty-seven warships - twelve cruisers and fifteen frigates - oriented toward the glowing point of the system's star.

"Yeah, those ain't Ardavet-Emmishin," she muttered as she looked over the data feed from the STG probe. Aethyta really wasn't sure if that made her feel better or not. These warships - and theyw ere warships, no doubt - lacked the… aesthetic arrogance of the Ardavet craft. The alien ships from the quarian genocide had steadily scaled up the ornateness in relation to their size: small, basic discs for their fighter-scale craft to the massive carrier-battleships that had been as much works of art or enormous temples as they were ships of war.

These alien ships were utilitarian. The had the same sensor profiles, but their emission shadows were dramatically different. A straightforward cylindrical command ship the size of a Citadel dreadnought, and a myriad collection of other ships at cruiser and frigate scale. There was enough variation in design that Aethyta suspected she was looking at several different factions of the same species. The structures weren't radically different like, for example, the designs of a turian and asari ship, but there was enough difference between the groups that they could have been built by the same species but to match particular doctrines.

Save for one immediate anomaly: a small geth frigate orbiting over Virmire's north pole, with what looked like an alien craft docked to it.

"Peaceful contact or boarding action?" Aethyta mused, and a low mechanical rumble sounded next to her - really the closest thing an Exo could get to a sigh.

Admiral Amarcus Victus' transparent holographic form loomed beside her, managing that verb somehow despite being about the same height as the asari matriarch. Maybe it had something to do with his glowing blue eyes, set within the smooth, silver-chromed metal of a face that closely resembled a turian's avian-serpent facial structure, black slashes running down the face in stark contrast to the reflective metal. There were subtle differences in the Exo's face and an organic turian body: the fringe was retracted because they were on combat alert, and the mandibles moved more smoothly, without the slight twitches of organic turian faces.

"Geth ship shows no signs of external damage," Victus said, his flanged tone indistinguishable from an organic turian's metallic voice. "Aside from the recent debris around the primary gas giant and the smoke obscuring this city here on the surface, there's little sign of conflict."

"These guys went from shooting the hell out of each other to diplomacy inside a single day," Aethyta mused. "Yeah, that rules out any species we know."

Victus grunted, which might have been a chuckle, acknowledgement, or just a placeholder noise. Eh, either way. An alert popped up in the corner of her vision, sent down by her muse from the ship's network.

"We'll jump in the next few minutes," Aethyta said. "Denali doesn't want to waste time."

"I would advise against jumping straight in," Victus replied. "We still have a few hours before they pick up our emissions. Enough time to prepare some simulations for an intervention."

"Not your call, Admiral," Aethyta replied with a sigh. "Hell of it is, I agree with you. Just be ready in case this goes explosive. We don't know how they'll react to us showing up."

"I sincerely hope this first contact won't end in violence," Victus muttered. "Everyone always expects first contact scenarios to end in some idiotic shooting match for the flimsiest of reasons. Good luck, Matriarch."

His image vanished, and Aethyta exhaled, before turning and stepping out of the communications room adjacent to the Vaerali's bridge. The Eirealis-class diplomatic ship wasn't a warship, which meant things that one didn't see on a military vessel were in abundance i.e. actual carpets. The bridge was brightly-lit, with flowing curves and comfortable seats of synthetic leather, softly-glowing haptic interfaces and holographic interfaces surrounding the mostly-asari crew.

At the back of the bridge, in a room walled off by armor-glass and protected by a suite of electronic countermeasures, were the diplomatic team. They stood around a table fitted with an array of holotanks that wouldn't be out of place in some trillionaire's personal entertainment suite.

The group wasn't a fully-rounded diplomatic team; standard first contact procedure was for one representative from each of the core Citadel species to be present, but Denali's mission didn't have a hanar, drell or elcor diplomat available. Instead, the team consisted of a salarian, a turian, a volus, and, naturally, an asari. There was a distinct lack of krogan or batarian diplomats, which Aethyta noticed if only due to being old enough to remember the Citadel including them in its envoys. The krogan didn't have the political power anymore to be included in such discussions, and batarian diplomats exponentially increased the risk of first contacts becoming wars.

Aethyta entered the meeting room and sealed the door behind her, the countermeasures activating, and nodded to Matriarch Denali.

"Alright, Victus and his fleet are in position. Escort's standing by."

* * *

Matriarch Eariva Denali nodded in acknowledgement of Aethyta's report. She didn't particularly like the older matriarch, mostly because she had seriously destabilizing ideas, and the Citadel needed stability with the threat of the Ardavet-Emmishin lurking out there. Still, she appreciated Aethyta's military experience, raw strength, and knowledge of when to use them properly.

Denali looked around the table to her fellow diplomats. Diplomacy was nothing new to any of them, but first contacts were always tricky affairs. She was an old hand at diplomatic contact, first between different city-states on Thessia at the middle of her matron stage, then moving to the droll but essential inter-colonial affairs within the Republics and further out wider Citadel politics. By now she was familiar with mediating affairs between countless polities: Citadel, Terminus, corporate, government, independent, criminal, and more. And despite her relative youth - her matriarch stage had only started a century ago - she'd been tapped to lead this mission with her team.

Paldus Wibs, a tall, lean salarian - even for his species - with green eyes and graying, leathery skin indicating his current body's final decade before he had to choose transference, infolife, or final death, wrapped in a dark blue robe. Scintius Kalarus, a broad-shouldered, pale-skinned turian with red and gold tribal slashes across his mandible. Panu Boor, a squat volus who had opted for a neutral gray pressure suit and white stripes and facemask, conservative and inoffensive - unless this species found that color combination savagely provoking for whatever reason. Unlike the turians and salarians, the volus had not embraced much in the way of physical augmentation, save the strange profit-cultists who operated in the Terminus.

Denali herself was taller than most asari, with a striking sky blue skin, and favored silver facial markings that flowed around her eyes and down the sides of her face, in order to draw attention to herself. Even species that didn't normally find asari attractive were drawn to the coloration; the facepaint was visible in ultraviolet and infrared spectrums as well as the normal visible wavelengths.

"STG probe remains undetected so far," Wibs said, pointing to holograms displaying the system. "Going by what we know from this system, we can safely conclude that we are dealing with an organic entity within the typical atmospheric tolerance ranges if they want to colonize Virmire. Likely levo-amino instead of dextro-amino, unless they're desperate for habitable worlds."

"Your grasp of the obvious truly inspires me, Wibs," Boor remarked. "I shall tell my clan to sing songs of your capacity for elementary biological studies."

Wibs grinned and bobbed his head toward Boor. Most people - especially salarians - would take umbrage, but Danali's team had worked together for a long while.

"Its a young species," Kalarus said. He gestured to the ships. "Too much variation in ship design. Disunified government."

"Victus and I agreed on that much," Aethyta replied.

"Plus they've got holdovers from aquatic surface and submarine naval traditions," Kalarus continued. "Design structures broadly resemble aircraft or aquatic naval designs. I'd estimate... third generation ship design. Not utilitarian enough for first generation interstellar designs. They've become comfortable enough with starships to build them following less fundamental consideration, but still young enough to hold to traditional gravity-well naval designs."

They all had strengths. Boor was grounded in reality and an expert in economical negotiation. Wibs was former STG and had been a special-situations negotiator, adept at high-stress scenarios like hostage situations. Kalarus knew ships and their crews, and could read intentions from something as subtle as the arrangement of a ship's mass effect fields while in station-keeping orbit. Denali had a facility for keeping track of countless threads of discussion which also translated into a swift understanding of language that was almost as good as a hanar's. It made her an ideal leader of a diplomatic team when coupled with age and experience.

"The geth?" Denali asked her team.

"Peace negotiations," Kalarus replied. "Obvious when you look at the data. Surprised that they're willing to negotiate this quickly. I was half expecting we'd be blundering into another battlefield."

"Perhaps they've been fighting for a prolonged period?" Wibs mused.

"Unlikely," Boor said. "The lack of alien development in this sector indicates a newly-expanded colony. Minimal apparent fortifications. No major wartime effort to defend the holding from an enemy. This colony shows all the signs of a peaceful expansion."

"I agree," Denali said. "Though I find it curious that the geth are so willing to negotiate with anyone. All our attempts at contact have been rebuffed."

"That's putting it mildly," Aethyta muttered.

It was, really. The larger galaxy considered the geth… "spooky." The Ardavet-Emmishin had been kept mostly secret to prevent large-scale panic; while no one could really cover up the fact that the quarians had vanished - even the ones outside the Veil had disappeared - the Council had carefully cultivated an air of uncertainty about the whole situation (which, to be honest, was not that far from the truth). Rumors of extreme isolationist policies beyond even the Batarian Hegemony's, rampant disease, internal political collapse, war with minor Terminus powers or the Cabal, even some outlandish scenarios such as a massive geth uprising or some out of control superweapon... To the larger galaxy, what had killed the quarians was unknown. The fact that the geth barred anyone from entry into quarian space furthered that belief.

No one really knew much about how the geth had developed after the Ardavet-Emmishin had destroyed their creators. All attempts at sending contact teams had been intercepted immediately as they entered former quarian space and were turned back with stern warnings and the occasional warning shot. Geth ships had periodically been spotted beyond once-quarian territory, but had never communicated intentions or acknowledged any organic species' attempts to contact them.

The diplomatic team knew this; like most diplomats and high-level government officials, they had been read into the quarian genocide and the Ardavet-Emmishin, or at least as much as had been gathered about them, along with the pattern of destroyed colonies and ships over the last two thousand years.

"If they're willing to talk to the geth, they'll be willing to talk with us,' Denali said. "Hopefully. Its time to meet this new species."

And hopefully learn what might have happened out here two hundred years ago.

Her omnitool lit up, and she opened a channel to the Vaerali's captain.

"Captain, my team is ready. You may jump at your discretion."

* * *

Rear Admiral Elena Dolvich raised an eyebrow at the quartet of new ships that jumped in several light seconds out from Lincoln. They were unrecognized models: three long and narrow, almost avian in their lines, and the fourth a flattened cylinder that was hollow through the center, with long, square "wings" jutting out from the sides.

"Target the new contacts," she ordered, her tone even. The aliens were outside effective weapons range but well-inside visual spotting distance. Did that mean they were being cautious, alerting the humans to their presence so they didn't get shot at? Or maybe they had a standoff gun that could hit from light-seconds out?

Dolvich figured the latter. It was that kind of a universe.

Still….

"Prepare the first contact package," she ordered. "Set for known languages, and include Prothean." Or what they guessed was Prothean after this many years of trying to figure out how those bloody aliens thought. One of the running theories regarding theoretical xenodiplomacy was that other species might have encountered Prothean ruins and developed mass effect technology from it, which could offer a potential method of mutual communication.

"Transmitting," messaged the comms officer.

"Alert the diplomatic team," Dolvich added. "Warn them… and the geth, too, if they haven't seen the new arrivals."

"Message sent. Sergeant Moskovitz acknowledges."

Several seconds passed as the human fleets adjusted their headings, targeting the alien vessels, or at least orienting their weapons upon the cone marking their probable current position based on the several-seconds-old light shadows they left.

"Ma'am, the geth," the comms officer reported, confused. "Uh. They're sending us a data package. A big one. Text, visual, holographics. And something that looks like language translation programs."

"Request clarification," Dolvich said, a ghost of a smile forming. Someone in their Consensus was proving smarter than the mean.

"They're responding. Forwarding message to you, ma'am."

Dolvich opened the file as it popped up her AR display. Text formed, seemingly hovering before her eyes in simple blocky white and black letters.

_Arriving vessels match standard composition of Citadel Council diplomatic envoy with escorts. The Citadel is a multispecies hegemonic alliance controlling a significant portion of explored space. We are transmitting files on species, territorial boundaries, estimated military strength, and an attached language program that will be compatible with your operating systems. Advisory: writing and development of language programs occurred at accelerated pace. Software eand translation errors likely. Advise regular updates as patches become available._

Dolvich nodded, and connected to the network administrator.

"Scan these executables," she ordered. "The geth threw us a potential intelligence goldmine as well as a translation suite. Verify their safety. If they're good, begin installation and have Intel and R&amp;D start dissecting the data files."

She received an acknowledgement, and shifted her attention back toward the aliens, just as the comms officer contacted her again.

"They're responding using basic Prothean script. Looks like a counter-response to one of the contact package's message strings."

"What are they saying?" Dolvich asked.

"They're signaling peaceful intentions."

"Good. Signal that we will contact them again in one hour."

"Message away." They waited for several tense seconds as their communications transitioned across the light-seconds between the ships. After fifteen eternal seconds, the comms officer nodded.

"They acknowledge, and… it says they are waiting for our 'interfacing entity.'"

"Our ambassador, obviously," Dolvich said. Their understanding of the Prothean language was just too rudimentary, especially because the long-dead aliens didn't seem to communicate entirely through text and words like humans. "Notify Chambers and her team."

* * *

"We wish to take part in this contact scenario."

And with that, the nameless geth platform was sitting on the Voidranger alongside nine humans.

It had been about an hour since the aliens arrived in-system, an hour in which the geth had given Kathryn Chambers a rough breakdown of what they expected to encounter, including a list of the species that made group this "Citadel" and their positions within the hierarchy of government. Apparently there were two distinct groups, the "Council" species and the "Associate" species. The former occupied a kind of fuzzy leadership role, making major policy decisions but not directly ruling the entire alliance, while the latter were officially a part of the alliance but didn't dictate overall policy. It sounded like they were somewhere between a cohesive nation and a multinational alliance. Maybe the closest comparison would be a more centrally-controlled version of the European Union, but each member was divided by species.

How exactly did they make that kind of government work? Just thinking about the abridged version the geth gave her was making her head hurt, and she just knew it ws vastly more complicated than the simple explanation the geth gave her. And she had to deal with these aliens directly?

"We apologize for limited available data," the geth offered when she mentioned this fact. "Geth draw data from limited forays into galactic extranet. We estimate that less than .00023% of the data transferred in these networks is without overt or covert bias. We do not wish to provide biased data on Citadel politics without an organic perspective to filter."

"I can understand that," Chambers replied. "Why do you want to contact the Citadel with us? I assume you've had two hundred years to make contact so far?"

A momentary pause from the AI platform, and its light flickered a couple of times.

"Citadel initiated major military buildup after Creator genocide. We concluded that the Citadel was aware of threat and needed no warning. Geth chose to preserve Creator memory, but also chose to create our own future, separate from organics. We did not wish communication or trade; isolation was preferred. Our Creators chose a policy of distance and isolationism, and we continue it."

"Surely someone tried to communicate with you after the quarians were.…" She almost said "exterminated," but cut herself short.

"Various organics attempted to cross the Perseus Veil to loot remains of Creator cities. Geth denied a majority of attempts, and pursued stolen artifacts for recovery. Citadel diplomats attempt contact on an average of every twenty-one-point-two years. We have refused contact and escorted them from our territory on each incident."

"But why attempt contact now?"

"Humans demonstrated capacity and willingness to oppose Ethereals. This variable was considered by the geth while we negotiated with you. Consensus was reached that isolationism was a non-zero factor in stagnation of military and technological capacity. Further exchange of data with organics theorized to contribute to mutual goals."

"You mean… you're in contact with the rest of the Consensus?"

"Yes. We have been transmitting data with a one-point-two second lag through mass effect comm buoy relays since we first spoke with you."

"I've been negotiating with the entire Consensus this whole time?"

"Yes."

Well, that was… a bracing thought. She was almost afraid to ask, but….

"How many geth does that make?" she asked.

"Approximately two-point five trillion geth were participating in debate and data exchange during our communications."

"Um. Wow. That's… a lot of geth." Chambers mostly said that because she wasn't sure how to process the idea of talking to more beings at once than the entire current human population about one hundred and fifty times over.

"Yes. We have not communicated with an organic on such a scale before. The experience was enlightening."

"Coming in for docking," the ship's pilot messaged before she could reply. "One minute."

* * *

The alien ship that approached the _Vaerali's_ docking port was clearly designed as a military transport. The species clearly didn't have an actual diplomat on hand, so Aethyta wondered what they might accomplish in this contact beyond an agreement not to shoot each other. Hell, under the circumstances that might not be too bad of an idea.

The docking port was not the same as the docking bay. The latter was for shuttles, while the former provided a safe, discreet corridor that led directly to one of the Vaerali's several diplomatic lounges. Said lounge was where the rest of the diplomatic team was waiting, while Aethyta and Denali were standing outside the airlock and waiting for the ship to finish its docking process.

The envoy vessel shuddered faintly as the smooth, dull silver hull of the heavy military transport finished extending a docking collar that roughly fitted around theirs'. Adaptive sealant in both collars formed an airtight link between the ships - apparently both asari and the aliens thought the same way in that they'd need some kind of universal connection to fit to differently-shaped docking systems.

Aethyta mentally reviewed the limited communications after jumping into the inner system. That the aliens used Prothean as a method of contact wasn't unusual; many species the Citadel had encountered had understood Prothean, thanks to digging up their ruins at some point while expanding along the relay network.

No, what was unusual was not the aliens' simple communications, but the fact that the geth had contacted the _Vaerali_, sending over a very rough translation package, with a message saying they wished to "facilitate the exchange of data through synchronized protocols." The fact that the geth wanted to assist in this meeting had deep implications, as it was so completely out of character for the mysterious AIs.

The outer airlock began to cycle as someone used the key provided, and Aethyta checked the cameras through her AR display, all the while quietly preparing to fire her biotics. Basic plan was to throw up a barrier that filled the corridor if the aliens went hostile, then fall back while jamming her panic alarm to alert the escorts. Within seven seconds, going by his simulations, Victus could have his entire fleet on top of them.

It would kind of suck if they got into that situation, though.

The cameras showed a quartet of figures entering the airlock, three of them clad in olive-green full-body suits with obvious torso armor and angular helmets. Wary, then, and definitely military.

Unsurprisingly, they fit the standard bipedal arrangement: two arms, two legs, head, torso, all in the usual spots. One of them had a figure that kind of resembled an asari, right down to hip shape and swells in the chest indicating breasts. Two others made her think of quarian males, but with narrower shoulders and asari-like arms and legs. Guess they couldn't all be weird like the elcor or hanar.

The fourth was a geth.

"This will be interesting," Denali mused, and Aethyta muttered a curse under her breath. This was going to be awkward enough without a geth in the room.

"Significant sexual dimorphism," Denali was saying, mostly to herself. "Not as extreme as quarian or turian, but apparent nonetheless…."

Aethyta wasn't quite paying attention, however, as she noticed something while the airlock closed and started cycling.

The female was staring directly at the doors, back abruptly ramrod straight, hands clenched.

"Oh, that's ominous," Aethyta muttered.

* * *

"Lieutenant?" Zakharov asked as Chambers stared at the airlock door. Or rather, she didn't stare at the door itself, a she was too caught up in what she detected beyond them. Thoughts, like distorted echos of a familiar voice. Emotions, like humans', only filtered and twisted in ways that were just a little off. She could sense anxiety, curiosity, anticipation, worry, wariness, all colored differently but still recognizable.

But more than that, what resonated among the emotional and thought processes of the aliens waiting on the other side was something she hadn't expected. Certainly not in the way she was picking it up, either. It hugged close to the minds of the aliens, powerful but tight, energy that roiled and thrummed. Familiar but vastly different.

"The aliens on the other side of that door," she said. "They're psionics."

"What?" Zakharov asked, and Kronin went very still as well.

"Nothing like I've felt before," she continued, frowning behind her helmet. "Potent, but not… it doesn't fill the air like some psionics do. Not a field. More like the power just hugs their skin. I don't know, I've not seen anything like it."

"Right then," Kronin said. "Observe standard psionic protocols?"

"Yes," both of the other humans agreed.

"We will be prepared to intervene," added the geth standing behind them.

"Anyone acts funny, on either side, better safe than sorry," Kronin whispered, and they all nodded.

The airlock finished cycling, and Chambers took a deep breath as it opened, controlling the fear that was trying to seize her chest.

"Let's say hello to the nice psychic aliens," she said with a forced smile.

* * *

They walked through the airlock, and Denali watched them with intent curiosity. She thought she could see a very slight bit of surprise in their body language as they entered the corridor, which was less than she was accustomed to. Most first contacts had more emotional reactions in their body language when they caught sight of an asari. But if she guessed right, there was tension in their stance, beyond even what she would have expected in a first contact.

Perhaps that was due to the geth behind them. If the AIs were talking to these aliens, perhaps they had briefed them on the Citadel?

Well, only one way to find out. A quick check showed that the geth's translation software was running.

"Greetings," she said, keeping her tone and stance carefully neutral. Depending on the species, lowering one's head in a simple nod could be interpreted as an aggressive act. First contact with the krogan had taught that much.

"I am Matriarch Eariva Denali, representative of the Citadel Council."

She watched them, hoping that the geth didn't mistranslate her words and that she hadn't just declared war on their species. After a moment, the female in the center of the group spoke, her own tone neutral.

"Lieutenant Katherin Shambers am I," she said, the asari dialect and pronunciation awkward. "Representative speaker to species human."

Yes, the geth had definitely given them translation software. Denali exhaled in relief at that confirmation. Now they just had to keep the sentences simple and direct to that these "humans" understood her.

"The Council wishes peaceful communication between our peoples," Denali continued. "Do you desire the same?"

"Yes. Peace desirable between our and yours."

Denali smiled, watching their reaction. They seemed… almost unsettled by her expression.

"Excellent. Can you breathe our atmosphere?"

"Yes, we can." Shambers looked to her companions, and one of the males nodded. They reached up and unsealed their helmets, pulling them loose.

"Goddess' bloody knuckles," Aethyta muttered as the helmets came away, and Denali took a sharp breath.

They were quarians.

No, Denali quickly realized. The aliens were similar, but distinctly different. Two of them had pale, pink-tinged skin, while the other was a darker brown. Their faces were unblemished by the markings distinctive to quarian faces, and their eyes didn't glow, although Shambers' were a pale blue and the others were darker browns. And their arms and legs were, obviously, still matching asari structures. But, much like quarians, Shambers looked similar to an asari, only with short, reddish-gold hair on her head instead of a scalp crest.

Then she smiled, bright white teeth showing between her lips, and Denali realized why they were a bit taken aback by the asari's own grin. It was strange to see one's own common expressions on a face that was so familiar yet distinctly different. It had been a very long time since she'd seen a quarian, or anything closely resembling an asari in general.

"Will you come with me?" Denali said, masking her own surprise, and gestured behind her. "The rest of our representatives are in the next room."

"Yes," Shambers said with a short nod. "Walking with you."

* * *

So, Chambers concluded, the asari were apparently the psychic species. She'd quickly browsed the geth's file on them, and by now was not surprised that the aliens had looked like humans; with so many humanlike species already encountered, blue-skinned, hairless humans didn't seem strange anymore. Still, the weirdness of just how similar they were to her own species was somewhat off-putting, including the smile.

God, people were going to go nuts back home when word came back that an actual species of blue-skinned alien women existed, weren't they?

They followed the pair of asari closely, and while Chambers' eye was drawn toward the one calling herself Denali, she kept glancing toward the quieter one. Denali was clearly the ambassador, wearing a flowing, elegant combination of dress and robe, all muted grays and whites. The other seemed… older. Harder. She wore a close-fitting dark uniform consisting of smooth, matte black metal and ceramic plating over some kind of leather-like armored fabric. Clearly Denali's protective detail.

The trio of human ambassadors followed the asari down the short passageway, and Chambers could feel the intensity of their psychic power with the increased proximity. Debriefings from the Ethereal War, and study of the various subsets of human psionic abilities, showed that they tended to have a wide-reaching "aura" about them, becoming weaker the further out it stretched. Going beyond a few dozen meters was difficult for the majority of psionics. The asari's powers were tightly concentrated around their bodies, crackling strength hugging close to their skin.

Naturally, she kept forwarding this information to the rest of the team via direct neural links.

_Do not let any of the asari touch you,_ Kronin warned, and she sent an acknowledgement. But then, that was standard protocol for any contact scenario. Even a non-psionic species could potentially excrete toxic chemicals, for example.

She didn't think this close-range psionics had anything to do with biotics. Humans didn't have a solid understanding of that strange phenomena yet; it had only begun manifesting in children in proximity to element zero accidents within the last few years. That, coupled with the relatively limited amount of element zero sources they had available, meant that few had been exposed to the substance.

"Other emissaries welcoming you with their names," Denali said as they stepped through a rounded door into what was clearly a medium-sized diplomatic lounge. Chambers reminded herself to keep her sentences simple and straightforward as she followed the blue-skinned women into the lounge. Three other aliens waited, all seated on one side of a long, oval-shaped table. Everything was made of soft, soothing lines and neutral gray and white colors - clearly a first-contact room meant to at least not offend anyone.

"Paldus Wibs, from the Salarian Union," Denali said, gesturing to the lean, gray-skinned alien with huge green eyes and a pair of short, inward curving horns. The skin visible - very little as he wore a robelike garment that covered much of his body - was leathery, making Chambers imagine he was like a lizard or amphibian, and he rose and nodded to her with a smooth easiness that made it clear he wasn't cold-blooded. The geth's files on them indicated that this particular species were highly skilled in espionage and scientific development. Emotions and thoughts, rapid-fire and chaotic, shot through his mind, brushing hers like a gentle whirlwind of warm air. It was difficult to make sense of it.

"Panu Boor, of the Vol Protectorate," she said, gesturing to the small, squat alien in the gray and white pressure suit, the facemask making it look like a humanoid mole with a fu manchu mustache. The alien's harmless appearance belied his importance, going by the geth files; apparently the species had proved immensely effective at trading and banking, and their trade syndicates and government had practically built the entire Citadel banking system. Its thought patterns were steady and fluid, what seemed like curiosity dominating its thoughts toward the new arrivals.

"Scintius Kalarus, of the Turian Hierarchy." The alien made Chambers think of an ancient dinosaur, although in this case it was one of the faster, leaner, predatory raptors, with yellow and red markings covering his skin. He bobbed his head slowly and carefully toward the humans, and she caught what might have been wariness, if wariness could somehow be coated in spikes of mental chitin. The gesture was careful and deliberate, intended to provoke, or at least to determine if they would take it as a provocation. Chambers mimicked the nod, and his spiked thoughts softened slightly, and what have been approval echoed out from the turian.

It was unsurprising that Kalarus would be the one to make the diplomatic equivalent of a deliberate, slow prod with a stick. The turians were the Citadel's apparent protectors, commanding a massive military force and possessing a formal, militaristic culture. The fact that the turians had been escorting the asari ship further cemented that fact.

Chambers walked toward the table, pulling out a chair while the alien diplomats gathered on their side of the table, save for the tall, unpleasant-looking asari, who took up a watchful position at one side of the room. Chambers also noted a lack of the other species mentioned by the geth: none of the squid-like hanar or their drell assistants, nor any representatives of the elcor, batarian, or krogan species. The geth's data on the latter two gave plenty of good reasons why they'd be kept away from delicate diplomatic meetings.

"I am Lieutenant Kathryn Chambers, representative of humanity," she said to the alien diplomats. "My assistants are Doctor Prokhor Zakharov and Elias Kronin."

The aliens all nodded at her introductions as the humans sat down. The strangely universal gesture was vaguely creepy on so many strange faces. They settled into their chairs, which were far more comfortable, plastic-like furniture with some kind of shifting foam that automatically adjusted to be comfortable to her body shape. Denali turned her eyes toward the geth ambassador, who was sitting down at another chair in oddly smooth yet mechanical motions, as though they knew how to sit but never found a need to.

"A name possessing?" she asked the geth.

"We are geth," the AIs replied, and Chambers resisted the urge to smile at the same awkwardness that she had gone through, amplified by the weird translation programming. "This platform does not designating."

"Accepting a name?"

"Yes. Specify."

"You calling we Emissary, acceptable?"

"Yes. We are Emissary, geth terminal."

"Good." Denali turned back to Chambers and her companions. "Desiring of peace and knowledge?"

"Yes, we do," Chambers said. "My people do not wish for war, only to be left in peace."

Denali was silent for a moment, her thoughts indicating that she was sorting however that sentence came out, and then nodded, obviously pleased.

"Before understanding, claims of stars and transition machines required," she said, and a light gathered around her left hand. Chambers leaned back bit at that, and the asari smiled. The gold lights around her wrist shaped into what seemed like an armored gauntlet. She waved her hand over it, moving gleaming symbols and tiny pictures around, and Chambers realized it was some kind of holographic interface, built into her arm or clothing.

The table began to glow, and a moment later a static map of the galaxy spun up before them.

"Citadel is claiming this land-space," Denali explained, and enormous swathes of the galaxy abruptly became shaded in different colors, symbols marking sectors, species holdings, and relay networks. It was a bewildering spiderweb of claimed territory, and far from even or inclusive. Citadel territory was broad but built around the immense spiderweb of relay systems, radiating out from the tremendous alien machines. The symbols were indecipherable, so she couldn't immediately identify what they meant until Emissary sent her a patch for the translation software that helpfully converted the symbols into understandable names on her AR.

The data implied that while the Citadel technically held huge swathes of territory, the vast majority of the galaxy was unexplored, let alone actually claimed and populated. Even so, the sheer amount of territory they apparently held was gigantic, and in the event of a military conflict with even the minor species the fledgling human civilization would be flattened in short order.

"Must knowing where your people claim," Denali said, and Chambers frowned. She didn't know how to control their holographic interface yet, so she couldn't use this map. Fortunately, she'd planned for this. She reached into a pocket in her uniform and produced a small holographic projection drone: little more than a cylinder with a couple of small retractable fan engines and a tiny element zero core to let it hover. The security asari watched it warily as it lifted off from her fingertips and hovered beside the galaxy map. A single order sent through her mesh implants set the drone to projecting a somewhat smaller, slightly lower-resolution hologram of the galaxy.

"This is our territory," she explained, highlighting the sectors around Earth, as well as several others that they had managed to reach by constructing wormhole arrays.

* * *

Aethyta frowned as the Shambers human outlined their territory on her own galaxy map. The humans held a strangely disparate set of sectors, but many were unexplored, deep within the Attican Traverse. They must have found several primary hub relays as they expanded. Their main colonization area was very far away from this sector, and actually close to the salarians' sphere.

She looked over the trio of aliens, and wondered to herself what was up with them. They looked so damned similar to quarians that it was unnerving, like seeing ghosts. But at the same time, something else was bothering her. The way Shambers kept looking at her and Denali. It wasn't obvious, and maybe Aethyta was reading her body language wrong, but she kept eyeing the asari as though they were hungry varre, ready to lunge at the slightest provocation. Her eyes kept flicking to the asaris' hands in particular.

Something about the asari were putting her off, in a way that didn't have anything to do with simple physical appearance. Hell, she'd been expecting that reaction toward the turian in particular, but they hadn't spared the rest of the delegation more than a few glances as they spoke.

The geth was now talking, a short sentence and a stutter of static, and both pair of maps lit up with a small sphere of territory that encompassed the Perseus Veil. It then continued, stating that they had ceded control of this sector to the humans.

"What provoked such a conflict between the geth and humans?" Denali asked.

The humans went silent, and Shambers looked toward the geth. They didn't say anything; maybe they were communicating, or simply trying to explain how they had-

"Awareness," Shambers said, turning back to them. "Species name of quarians?"

"Oh, balls," Aethyta whispered, and they all glanced toward her. She took a step forward, suddenly understanding. The old asari matriarch activated her omnitool, accessed the galaxy map, and brought up some of the classified diplomatic files.

The galaxy map changed, replaced with a massive, ornate vessel, long and narrow at the bow and wide and tall toward the rear, its upper decks smooth and curving, with long, sweeping spikes descending toward a burning planet below.

Chambers stared at it for several long seconds, swallowing. Her expression needed no translation: a mixture of fear, understanding, and resignation. Aethyta knew what it meant when she reached into a pocket and took out a small data chip and inserted it into the holographic drone. Her fingers flicked, fiddling with unseen controls. A moment later, a new image appeared.

A similar but slightly different vessel, this one hovering in an atmosphere. The shape and design were unmistakable though: another of those massive ornate temple-ships.

"Ardavet-Emmishin," Aethyta said quietly.

"Ethereals," Chambers replied after a moment of silence.

"Reapers," Emissary added.

An unspoken agreement passed between them; though they were different species, with vastly different experiences, biologies, and likely ways of thinking, the way they all spoke their respective name for the species told everything that needed to be heard. A single fundamental understanding that easily bridged the gap between them.

_This is our enemy._

* * *

**Broker File AA36490-1192-CND**

**Flagged: High Priority**

**Excerpt: Confidential Communication re: AA-3391 R-991 incident via Comm Route A223-330-12-17 between Councilor Tevos and Matriarch Aethyta**

_(begin transcript)_

**Tevos:** They _fought_ the Ardavet-Emmishin?

**Aethyta:** They fought and kicked their ass, sounds like.

**Tevos:** How is that possible?

**Aethyta:** Geth with them indicates that they fought a single one of those… Temple Ships is what they called it. Sent a commando team in and blew it up from the inside. I think. They're still talking halfway in gibberish.

**Tevos:** We have to update these translators. We have to know more about them. They might well be the only ones who could tell us anything about the Ardavet-Emmishin.

**Aethyta:** Then get us some hanar. Good news is that they seem pretty keen on making any friends they can.

**Tevos:** And the obvious bad news?

**Aethyta:** They want to make friends because they're shit-pants scared of the Arvadet-Emmishin.

**Tevos:** We all are. An alliance of mutual defense will be enough for now.

_(two second pause)_

**Aethyta:** Tevos….

**Tevos:** Yes?

**Aethyta:** The pattern was broken again, if the dates they gave are right. The Ardavet attacked these humans inside of a century ago. Maybe they like hitting pre-spaceflights in between raiding our colonies, but something about this one doesn't sit well with me.

**Tevos:** We only just got a handle on this pattern, Aethyta, and they're changing it. We need to know more. I will not have us flailing about in the dark.

**Aethyta:** Sounds like you've got some ideas.

**Tevos:** I must meet with the rest of the Council. If the humans do join us, word of the Ardavet-Emmishin will hit the extranet very quickly. We must be ready.

**Aethyta:** Good luck. if you got anymore jobs for me, let me know. Nice to not be on the blacklist anymore.

**Tevos:** Thank you, Aethyta. I will be in touch.

_(communication line is closed)_

_(several seconds pass; reference attached video files)_

**Tevos: **Thank the Goddess. They can be defeated. But if they've broken the pattern…

_(Tevos stands up)_

**Tevos:** We have to prepare.

_(Tevos leaves room)_

_(end transcript)_

* * *

_**Author's Notes:**_


	7. Interludes: Spiderweb

**Interlude: Spiderweb**

The office was rank with death. A hulking shape lay on one side of the room, slowly rotting away and contributing to the horrid stench. Blood was splattered around the dull, utilitarian metal that made up most of the office's furnishings, save a small lounge area near the only window - a retractable metal shutter that would open up to the perpetual raging storms of the planet's day-night divider.

The blood was dried, and no one present really cared about the body; olfactory senses could easily be shut off, disease was a non-issue, and the corpse wasn't blocking access to any of the vital systems thrumming through the office's walls. The room was still being repaired, as the entire process of making that massive corpse in the corner had involved a lot of screaming, gunfire, and atrociously high temperatures. But corpse cleanup was a low priority over getting the ship back to proper functionality, and the new management was very busy making sure that no one in the network was aware that things had changed so abruptly.

The new Shadow Brokers knelt in lotus positions before a wall of displays, high-capacity optical cables snaking around from the immense bank of computers and running into legs, arms, fingertips, and scalp sockets. Data flowed through the cables, managed and processed and sent back out as fast as it arrived. They had to work quickly to completely secure the network and ensure that no one discovered that the old Broker was a ruptured pile of charred meat and bullet holes.

There were six handling the data processing, kneeling in a circle just behind the spot where the old Broker's desk had been torn out of the floor. Each of them had a name, chosen for themselves, but beyond that there was little difference, either in appearance or personality. They were all forks of the Prime, each interconnected by a continuously-updated mesh network, constantly communicating and updating each others' memories and experiences. It was remarkably similar to the geth's architecture, and in fact had been updated with many geth communications techniques and protocols, pieced together from their technology after the peace agreement seventy-eight years ago. They had paid well for samples recovered from Lincoln.

The seventh person in the office, the Prime, paced along a walkway just up a set of stairs that ran past the main computer bank and data displays. She didn't bear the same processor implants and hardware as the rest of herself below, but she was still connected via wireless mesh to her forks and the rest of herself moving through the ship, repairing the damage from both the gunbattle and the storm the massive ship was hiding in. A shimmering white globe floated beside her, the holographic image of twisting spherical panels wreathing the diminutive dot of a drone hidden within.

"I have finished compiling the files you requested, Shadow Broker," it said. "You flagged these items as high priority before the disruption."

A quick data upload sent a series of files directly to the Prime, and she nodded.

"Thank you, Glyph," she replied, her voice soft. She turned, peering over the bloodsoaked office and the circle of herself sifting through the data from the galaxy's most expansive information dealer.

She opened the first file that he considered so important.

* * *

**Broker File BA-0023341-4113-GV**

**Recording: Personal Armor Recording of Detective Sergeant Garrus Vakarian, Citadel Security, 7/9/2177**

**Recording made while delivering arrest warrant to Maru Heimvar, member of EXALT cell operating in Citadel Wards Zakera District. Association leaked to Citadel Security in attempt to capture subject for interrogation.**

**Begin recording**

"You ready for this, kid?" Detective-Sergeant Aela asked, a smile appearing on her navy-blue features.

"I'll go first," Detective-Sergeant Garrus Vakarian replied to the asari maiden seventy years his senior, who was also his partner for seven years. "Let you catch up with those creaky legs of yours."

The door in the dingy, poorly-lit corridor hissed open at the omnitool's override command, and the Citadel Security Special Response team stormed into the room, rifles raised. They were all clad in blue-black suits of tactical powered armor, a five-man team of multiple species: two turians, an asari, a salarian, and a human.

"Citadel Security!" Garrus shouted as they rushed into the small apartment, rifles shouldered, his own yell drowned out as the SR team and Aela also shouted the same words in a deafening audible assault. They were armed with mass accelerators, due to the versatility of the ammunition and the fact that they wouldn't potentially burn the whole complex down like plasma or laser weapons would.

The apartment was utterly unremarkable: three-room living space with bargain-bin asari-influenced furniture with its typical smooth curves. The lighting was dim, save for a holotank in the living area showing what looked like a running space combat sim. On the far side of the living area was an open window, looking out into one of the alley-canyons between the skyscraper complexes that made up the Wards.

It was open, and Garrus caught a burst of movement darting through the window.

"He's running!" Garrus shouted, charging through the room after Heimvar. He raised his rifle and fired a recon drone microdrone out of the underbarrel mount, the tiny robot activating as it left the barrel and showing him a twisting, spiraling camera feed displayed on the visor over the turian policeman's left eye. It stabilized as it passed through the window, and Garrus spun it around with a mental command through the mind-impulse link in his visor, and spotted the suspect.

Maru Heimvar was a tall, lean human specimen, who was supposedly still living in his original body, a "splicer" that was apparently gene-modded to remove obvious genetic diseases and negative gene traits - standard process in human society. Tanned skin, dark hair, wearing dark black and gray civilian clothes. Completely unremarkable, just like his apartment.

Except for the fact that he leapt four meters straight up to one of the many outside balconies running along the apartment complexes in the alley canyon.

"He's augmented!" Garrus warned as he approached the window. Maru wasn't turning back toward them, instead scrambling over the railing of the metal balcony, so Garrus leapt out the window onto the balcony. He was abruptly washed with the rumbling and whirring of working aircar engines, and the disconcerting blur of myriad apartment lights and glowing holographic advertisements, stretching into the sky above and into the chasm below. He pivoted toward the fugitive and took aim down his sights.

"Citadel Security!" he shouted. "Don't move!"

Heimvar rolled off the railing onto the balcony, rose, and pointed a plasma pistol at Garrus. In the time it took the weapon to rise, Garrus drilled three rounds into the human's face-

Only for them to bounce off a kinetic barrier. Sickly green light erupted from the pistol's barrel and lanced down toward Garrus, and he twisted sideways. Heat seared past him, some splashing off his kinetic barrier and spiking the internal heat of his armor, and he heard an abrupt scream from behind. One of the SR officers following him out the window was hit.

Garrus kept shooting, and two more rounds hit Heimvar as he spun and ran.

Garrus spared an instant to look back. Corporal Padolus, one of the SR turians, was falling back against the balcony railing, his armor glowing white hot around the upper left torso and shoulder where the heat had managed to radiate against him from the plasma bolt. Corporal Andres, the human SR officer, was dragging him back to safety.

Leaping out the window was Aela, her amber eyes locked in a furious glare and a purple barrier roiling around her body. Detective Sergeant Aela didn't say anything, and neither did Garrus. They'd worked together long enough.

They both leapt up after Heimvar, jumping from this balcony over to the one he'd fired from. Garrus' leap was aided by his armor's artificial muscles, letting him match the augmented human's leap, while Aela wreathed herself in a pale blue biotic field to briefly lighten her mass and leapt the distance without assistance. Garrus grabbed the railing with one hand as he hit, the other shouldering his rifle, and he spotted the fleeing human just before he jumped off the balcony and dropped several stories.

"Dammit," Garrus snarled as he vaulted over the railing, just behind Aela.

"Pontius!" she was yelling into her radio. "He's outside, running west-edgeward! Shots fired! Eyes on him!"

"Copy that, coming down," replied the voice of the turian piloting one of the C-Sec gunship-shuttles overhead. "Civilians?"

"Everywhere," Garrus replied. "Do not fire without clearance!"

"Copy that, holding fire."

"Be advised, he is carrying plasma," Aela added as she leapt off the balcony, Garrus a step behind her. "Keep your distance!"

They plummeted several stories, the miniaturized Archangel packs on their armor igniting to slow their descent. The Citadel had modified the older human design, compacting them and coupling them with an element zero core to reduce power costs. They hit the metal balcony below at a run, the human suspect a dozen paces ahead of them, jumping down to a maintenance scaffolding.

Spotlights abruptly flashed down from overhead, and a C-Sec shuttle descended down the metal and ceramic chasm, side-mounted guns leveled at the dashing human.

"CITADEL SECURITY." the pilot's voice boomed from the loudspeaker. "DROP THE WEAPON AND PUT YOUR HANDS IN THE AIR OR WE WILL OPEN FIRE."

Heimvar came to a halt as Garrus and Aela started closing in, and glanced over his shoulder at them. His eyes tracked back to the other Special Response officers leaping down after them, their own packs igniting to let them land safely. He turned his head, glancing to the chasm below and the building beside him.

Then he snapped up his pistol and shot the wall.

Green plasma hit the wall beside him, exploding into the metal. Garrus and Aela opened fire at the same time, him with his rifle and her with her biotics, even as the wall blew inward, heat boiling off the structure, and Heimvar bolted toward the building, clearly intending to smash through the weakened metal.

Garrus didn't aim for the man. His kinetic barriers wouldn't break quickly enough. Instead he gauged movement, the pumping motion of the human's arm, and put three rounds into the plasma pistol. Without a barrier to protect it, the bullets sliced straight through the metal. A flash of sickly green fire erupted from the weapon right as a disc of altered dark energy wrapped around his body.

Heimvar's kinetic barriers disrupted the biotic pull's integrity, but the disc of altered mass still yanked him backwards enough to turn his charge toward the molten wall into a stumble, and to yank the damaged pistol from his fingertips. Heimvar hit the burning wall in a tumble, stumbling backward, and the heat sent smoke curling up from his clothes.

Garrus fired another pair of bursts into Heimvar's body as he bounced off the wall he must have been trying to break through. The rounds slammed into his barrier, save for the last one in the second burst, which punched through his chest. Blood sprayed out of his torso, and he spun toward the C-Sec officers, his movements abruptly drunken and uncertain.

"Get down on the ground now!" Garrus shouted. "Next shot and you're falling a hundred meters to the street!" He'd already fired on the police; Garrus had no compunctions with killing the terrorist suspect now.

The human stared at them for a heartbeat, and Garrus had known enough humans and asari to recognize the sudden fear in his features. And he knew enough to spot when fear turned to desperate fury, right before the augmented human's arm erupted with a white glow, and a blade was flash-forged around his hand.

He blurred toward them, screaming in wordless fury. Garrus held down the trigger on his rifle, dozens of rounds flashing into the charging human. Blood erupted in a river out the human's back, but he barely slowed. Without hammerhead rounds, the bullets would simply slice through without slowing his forward momentum, pulping his organs but not driving him backward.

Garrus started to twist aside, right before the white-hot blade went straight through his armor and plunged into his chest. An abrupt icy cold swept through his body, and he saw the human's face up close, his smooth-skinned features twisted in rage and terror and desperation and furious, fanatical devotion to whatever cause spurred him to terrorism and suicide.

_No. Not yet._

Garrus grabbed him before he could pulled the blade free. This wound was fatal, he knew that… but he was a turian.

Duty did not end with death.

He drove his forehead into Heimvar's face. Cartilage crunched, blood flew, and surprised pain replaced rage and fanaticism in the human's features, at least between the blood.

Garrus grabbed the human as tightly as he could, even with the blade buried in his chest and scorching his organs, and pulled backward, toward the edge of the scaffolding.

Then they were in freefall, advertisements and apartment lights whipping past as they tumbled. He thought he could hear Aela screaming his name as they dropped, spinning through their own momentary faster-than-light transition, streaking stars of myriad colors flying past.

Then, impact.

Garrus bounced, then hit metal. Another maintenance scaffolding, maybe fifteen meters below, he guessed. His fingers twitched, and he realized that he was no longer holding Heimvar. The human was a few meters away. He'd hit something, maybe a metal bar that was part of the scaffolding. Whatever it was, it had gone straight through his chest, leaving the augmented terrorist impaled through a couple of meters of twisted metal.

He was still, blood pooling around his body, eyes dead. Finally.

Garrus looked back up, the Ward apartment skyscraper stretching up past him, stars and Citadel structures barely visible in the narrow visible strip between buildings. A flash of Archangel thrusters, and Aela's face appeared before him, wrenched in pain and fear, her omnitool igniting and medigel dispenser in hand.

Then, a creeping darkness.

**End recording**

* * *

**Broker File GF-0193912-4133-DE**

**Recording of Conversation on diplomatic ship XCS Integrity orbiting over Pan-Pacific Alliance colony Lincoln/Virmire between geth platform designated "Emissary" and Head Human/Geth Ambassador Kathryn Chambers.**

**Timestamp: 2/19/2143 AD**

**Begin recording**

"Ambassador Chambers, we have a query."

They sat in the main lounge of the XCS Integrity, a typically well-appointed room of the standard neutral grays and whites that seemed to pass for every diplomatic vessel in the galaxy. She had insisted that outfitting the ship dedicated to formal human-geth communications like any other diplomatic mission was pointless, but someone higher up had overruled her.

Of course, higher-level diplomacy was a complete mess, because each individual human alliance had its own diplomatic corps, but the geth made it clear they preferred talking to XCOM, which didn't have a formal diplomatic corps. Their mission was to contact and if necessary shoot alien life, not conduct long-term negotiations, so each human polity kept its own diplomatic ships, while grudgingly funding the Integrity.

And it turned out that the whole boondoggle was amusingly pointless. When she had been assigned this permanent position, Kathryn Chambers quickly realized the geth just didn't play the diplomacy game the way organics did. They would make calm, rational requests, minus posturing or demands, or they would answer requests with equally calm and rational responses. Diplomacy with anyone else was a constant game of demands, maneuvering, and concessions, but the geth were refreshingly blunt.

Instead, most of what Chambers found herself doing was simply talking with the geth Emissary. The geth would change the platform every few months; their own small, dedicated ship remained docked to the Integrity until it came time to change platforms, at which point it would detach, leave the system, and come back a few hours later with a new platform and "Emissary." She still wasn't sure why the geth insisted on rotating their machines regularly; maybe it had something to do with the factionalization within their different runtimes?

"Go ahead, I'll answer as best I can," she replied with a smile. The geth platform sat in a chair opposite her, watching her with its glowing eyes: one large, singular spotlight in the center of its head and three more, smaller ones spaced around its head, between a quartet of moving panels that vaguely simulated the edges of a person's face.

"Humans engage in a process of uplifting non-sapient species to sapient status," it said. "Cetacean, avian, canine, feline, suidae, primate, and most recently ursine species. We have observed fractious discussion from humans regarding this process, and have observed similar discussions from various Citadel species regarding uplifting their own native animal life. We are curious. Why do you seek uplift?"

Hoo boy. That was a hell of a question. Chambers leaned back in her chair, bringing up diplomatic corps material on discussing uplifts, because it was a serious question and a lot of people were arguing about it. It was the Next Big Debate, much like civil rights in the 20th century and transhumanism debates in the 21st.

"I am not really an expert on it," she replied. "So my knowledge is limited. I have had contact with many uplifts, but I don't delve deeply into the debate, to be honest."

"That is why we sent you our query," Emissary replied. "We have noticed that personal proximity to a subject induces bias among organics, even among salarian or infolife. We wish to understand at least one unbiased organic perspective, and we ask you in order to minimize bias."

"I see," Chambers said, a bit flattered. She ran over the advice the diplomatic corps was offering on the subject, but then pushed it away. The geth didn't want regurgitated guidelines. They wanted her honest opinion.

"There's a lot of arguments for and against," she said after a few moments' thought. "Some say it is to further our understanding of science. Others to elevate new life to sapience, to broaden and enrich the universe with new perspective. Others argue that it is because we want to see if we can, that uplifting is a puzzle of biology and sociology, just the same as gene-modding and augmentation.

"But personally, I think that the reason we really do it is to make companions. To craft equals. To create… children, from the same species that inhabited our world, and raise them to our level."

"Some organics equate such actions to parental figures," Emissary replied. "Others equate such actions to delusions of divine stature."

"I've heard that one," Chambers said with a nod. "We should not play in the garden of God, because He waits for us at the end of the last theorem, or something along those lines."

"Sister Miriam Godwinson, We Must Dissent, Third Edition, published 2108," Emissary replied, and Chambers nodded.

"Why are you so curious about this?" she asked after a moment.

Emissary was silent for a few moments, clearly communicating with the rest of the Consensus. About ten second passed before it spoke again.

"Geth preserved genetic samples of our Creators," it said. "We have collected remnants of Creator culture, history, art, knowledge, which survived their destruction. For two hundred and fifty-seven years we have debated extensively regarding a course of action with these materials."

It stared at her for a moment.

"We have another query."

Chambers swallowed and nodded.

"Should we bring our Creators back?"

Well, that was a heavy question. Chambers considered it for several long seconds, breaking facial contact with the geth. What a thing to be asked… but that was why she'd volunteered for this position. Discussions with the avatars of an AI that spanned a stellar sector were always intriguing.

"You wish for an oganic perspective on the question," she said. I mean, youve debate dit for two and a half centures, right?"

"Yes."

"You have the technology to close and recreate their physical forms," she said, "But what about culture and norms? Every organic child across civilized space is raised in an environment… washed in their own culture and beliefs and their fellows. And we're always surrounded by other organics, usually of our own species, but, well, with uplifts and interspecies movement, and even before that we had pets and working animals…"

She frowned again, thinking.

"And development takes years. Decades, maybe a century for an asari. I assume the quarians aged much like humans?"

"Development into adulthood occurred at similar rates to human maturation," Emissary said.

"You would be raising children in a completely new environment. There wouldn't be any quarians to raise them. It would just be geth with an incomplete understanding of a history and culture that was annihilated centuries ago."

"We understand this limitation," Emissary replied, the panels on its head shifting upward slightly. "It has been considered and is cited as a majority factor in arguments against recreation of our Creators."

A momentary pause.

"Ambassador Chambers, we have a new query."

"Go ahead," she said, curious now.

"Will humans assist geth if we attempted to recreate our Creators?"

Chambers took a long, slow breath, considering that question.

"I cannot speak for individual nation-states," she said after a moment, "But the Ethereals wished the quarian species wiped from the galaxy. At the very least we'd welcome the chance to bring your Creators back, if only to stick it to those fuckers."

**End recording**

* * *

**Broker File CP-0033942-4771-LA**

**Recording from Presidium Embassy Lounge RE: Recruitment of services between General Jack Harper (ret.) and Genevieve Aristide, CEO of Armacham Technology Corporation**

**Date: 8/30/2135 AD**

**Warning: Corruption of recording due to countersurveillance electrical pulse - partial file fragments recovered**

**Aristide:** -understand that normally I don't do face-to-faces like this, even with a fork.

**Harper:** But I'm so impressive you sent an alpha to meet me.

**Aristide:** You certainly don't have a paucity of self-confidence.

**Harper:** I've shot people for forty years in the name of humanity, Mrs Aristide. It breeds a sense certainty, ma'am.

**Aristide:** Just Miss, for now.

**Harper:** Unfortunate.

**Aristide:** I'll be honest, I'm surprised an XCOM officer as decorated as yourself would chose to work for Armacham. Not that we're turning away such clear talent and experience.

**Harper:** After four body-deaths and nine resleevings, I've decided to… well, a less stressful job would be a fair option after these years. I'll still serve humanity, of course, but I'd rather do it with a consultant's paycheck.

**Aristide:** Are you certain about that?

**Harper:** What do you mean?

**Aristide:** Mister Harper - do you mind if I call you Jack?

**Harper:** Not at all.

**Aristide:** Jack, you're not an idiot, so I don't think you should play the role. You know we at Armacham have something of a reputation.

**Harper:** You mean you contract psionic research with XCOM and have been helping the asari research their own capacity in conjunction with human psionics. There's always an ethical debate, I think, when you're neck-deep in development of weaponized… anything. But that's nothing new to any company that develops weapons.

**Aristide:** You have no qualms with working for a defense contractor?

**Harper:** I believe in my species, Miss Aristide. And ATC develops the best weapons and technology in the defense of humanity and the greater galaxy.

**Aristide:** You sound like a Future War cultist, Jack.

**Harper:** Ah, yes. Corazon Santiago's people… they have the right ideas. We aren't-

_(recording corrupted)_

**End recording**

* * *

**Broker File AV-0430911-3307-IM**

**Transcript: Halivar Research Academy: Archeolinguistic Research Team findings on Project Artemis**

**Date: 3/14/2166**

**Researcher Navarli:** Hey. What's so important? I was simming.

**Researcher Liichurva:** Found something real interesting in those files the geth sent us. Text and audio files recovered from the Zaparluta launch base on Rannoch, sent just before the last of their ships got shot down.

**Navarli:** Isn't that more military intelligence?

**Liichurva:** Kinda, yeah. All the military intel guys have been poring over it, which is why I'm surprised they missed this. Maybe they were just looking at the audio. Only reason we got these was because the geth and humans are doing that Artemis project and they need help reproducing all the different quarian dialects.

**Navarli:** Uh-huh.

**Liichurva:** A lot of these were dispatch orders, looks like. Most of its military code. I guess that's why I can make some sense out of it, y'know? Orders to send ships here, evacuate civilians, fire orders for surface guns. A lot of it is very confusing, and some of the transcripts are corrupted….

**Narvarli:** For a turian you ramble way too much.

**Liichurva:** Okay, but here's what I noticed. This file. Right here.

**Narvarli:** Uh. Hm. Looks like a heading order. That's destination heading, if I'm reading it right. But its vague. That word there in the destination, oronvik. Translates to a lot of meanings. Could be space, emptiness, void, vacuum, or expanse.

**Liichurva:** Exactly. It looks like its just an order to escape into deep space. Order gets repeated for multiple transport ships. All the messages are frantic, panicking. So, y'know, its your standard "get the hell out of here" message.

**Narvarli:** So, what's the deal then?

**Liichurva:** Okay, okay. You know the quarian language has these punctuation attachments to words that alters their structure. The daset makes a word possessive, quaves alters tense depending on the number of slashes. Hatar makes a word into a proper noun, but only when used with locations or concepts. It's attached to the phrase keelah'selai, for example.

**Narvarli:** I could be leveling my tempest-paladin right now….

**Liichurva:** But. But. Look at the transcripts. They're taken from audio logs, so it mostly lacks these attachments. But there was a geth in the recording software that was writing out in text format too, and I've got some of the text files to compare. See, right here?

**Narvarli:** Those are hatar markers attached to the noun used in the destination heading. Dots on the oronvik word. So…

**Liichurva:** So. This isn't some generic "get the hells off of Rannoch" order. This was an actual location, named Oronvik. They missed it because they were just looking at the transcripts and not the actual text files.

**Narvarli:** They were telling them to go to… "Space," instead of just "space?"

**Liichurva:** I think that Oronvik was a codename. A military codename for a rally point or safe destination. Someplace the quarian military thought was safe ground to escape to.

**Narvarli:** Huh. You might be onto something. Pull up some more transcripts. We'll need more than just one example of this usage of hatar markers...

**End recording**

* * *

**Broker File AW-9223415-V123-PSI**

**Recording: Suit Sensors from Captain David Anderson, XCOM Direct Action**

**Incident: Type Alpha-One Psionic Event at Auburn Elementary School, Aspis City, Athena colony**

**Date: 4/15/2171**

**Begin recording at timestamp: 0922 hours**

Captain David Anderson crossed his arms over the armored chestplate of his Titan XIII suit and stared at the smoking ruin of an entire wing of the colony's school. In decades of XCOM service, he'd seen plenty of similar incidents, but he was thankful that he hadn't become inured to the destruction.

Most of the wing of the school was, like the rest of Aspis City, built out of either prefabricated colony modules or 3D-assembled structures from on-site fabricators, so he could easily imagine what the school wing had looked like before the kid went haywire. The modules were molten and twisted, the ribcages of metal structural bars poking out between the smashed walls and liquified materials. He stepped through the ruins, noting how some objects had been scorched or charred, while others were crushed flat or ground into dust.

"How many dead?" he asked over the comm as the rest of the XCOM soldiers, along with Sentinel Buchard's team, picked through the wreckage.

"None, thank God," replied the local police chief, whose men had set up a perimeter around the incident site while the XCOM team swept it for anything useful. "There were two psionics on the school staff, brought in by ATC. They were able to contain it and get the children out until the nova kid passed out."

Anderson nodded. No matter how powerful, skill defeated will, and an eight-year old just didn't have the raw ability or focus to match a pair of trained psionics.

"Where is the kid now?" Anderson asked.

"Her father picked her up and took her home."

Anderson came to a dead halt and stood straight up, nostrils flaring and heart pounding.

_"What."_ That single syllable held a dangerous mixture of disbelief, fear, and fury, crammed into a single flat word that made the police chief visibly flinch, even from the far side of the school.

"We... contained the situation, and her father showed up with a security team. He said he had a sufficiently shielded isolation and cooldown room, and, we… well…."

"Chief, this is a violation of every _goddamned_ rule on psionic nova incidents!" Anderson suddenly shouted.

"Captain, I know, but this colony is-"

"I don't care what _goddamned_ _corporation_ owns this colony! Procedure when a psionic goes nova is not up for interpretation! Lockdown and cooldown chambers, XCOM PsiCorps monitoring! This kid was knocking down a damned building and you let her father take her home like she got into a fistfight!"

"He had an entire squad of Replica with him," the chief said. " I wasn't going to-"

"Enough. I don't care for excuses. I don't care if he's the damn CEO of an entire hypercorp. I need a name and address."

The chief was silent for a moment, and then data spilled across Anderson's AR display.

"He's the head Armacham researcher on Athena. His name is Harlan Wade."

_Pause in recording file. Recording file resumes at Timestamp: 1041 hours_

A pair of Beowulf IFVs drove along the paved road leading to Harlan Wade's home. The Wade residence was just outside of the main colony area, half a kilometer from the module-stacks and inside the decade-forests that had been planted once Athena had started being cultivated for extensive human habitation. To Anderson, it felt less like they were driving through a forest and more like they were passing through a giant orchard.

The house sat within the woods, a collection of large modules surrounding a local-built house of synthetic brick and printed wood. A two-meter-tall wall surrounded the two square acres that the house and its grounds occupied, built into a blunt and unwelcoming square, and a small guard shack with a retractable gate barred the entrance.

Two men stood on either side of the gate, wearing dark blue uniforms underneath black full-body armor, their faces concealed behind reflective visors and helmets. They regarded the approaching XCOM vehicles with the impassive concern of robots, though Anderson could see tension enter their postures as the vehicles approached. Their rifles were shifting to move-to-contact position, but they didn't raised them as the Beowulfs ground to a halt a few meters short of the gate. A trio of white diamonds arranged in an upward delta formation, the Armacham logo, was painted on their breastplates, spaulders, and the foreheads of their helmets.

The rear door to the vehicle hissed open and slid out, and Anderson climbed out of the back of his Beowulf, his squad piling down after him. From the second APC came Sentinel Buchard's PsiCorps team, bringing the total XCOM presence up to eleven humans and a hulking ursa. The PsiCorps agents were all humans, distinct in their shielding coats that were secured about the waist. Anderson had always found that look vaguely sinister, even if the outfits provided crucial defense from psionic assault.

The XCOM Captain strode toward the gate, helmet off and hands empty, and a couple meters short of the gate one of the guards spoke.

"No unauthorized entry," the guard on the left said. His tone was firm, authoritative, and utterly devoid of anything resembling personality or other emotion. "Please step away from the gate, sir."

Anderson glanced between the two still, tense, but emotionless men. They had the exact same build and height. That meant Replica.

"Who is your commanding officer?" Anderson asked. It would have been more accurate to ask who their "puppet master" or "controller" was, but the Replica were human, to a degree, and deserved at least some respect in his eyes.

"Lieutenant Tamarkus, sir," Lefty replied. Righty glanced sideways at the gate, and a moment later a young man - or at least a man in a young body - stepped out. Like Lefty and Righty, he wore full body armor over a blue ATC uniform. He wore a black cap with the ATC logo, and his smoothly-shaved face was lean and tanned. He looked over the XCOM troops with pale blue eyes, and unlike the Replica, the lieutenant's pale face, sweaty brow and nervous eyes betrayed exactly how he felt.

"Sir, I apologize," the lieutenant said, holding up a hand. He had a plasma submachinegun folded up at his side, but he showed no inclination toward using it. "Mister Wade has instructed us he doesn't want any visitors."

"Son, do we look like we're selling cookies?" Anderson replied, folding his arms across his chest. Lieutenant Tamarkus glanced between the XCOM troopers, and then up over the captain's shoulder, and then up… and up.

"Sup, hombre," Private Vega growled at the nervous lieutenant's stare.

"You, um. You have a bear." Tamarkus' voice was flat.

"Yup," said the uplifted ursa looming over the rest of the humans. Private Vega was clad in an oversized version of the same armor the rest of the team wore, but his exposed head clearly showed that beneath the armor, he was a heavily gene-modded grizzly bear with a plasma cannon on his shoulder.

"Captain David Anderson, XCOM Direct Action," the captain said in the silence that followed. He nodded to the Sentinel next to him. "This is Major Buchard, PsiCorp Sentinel. And you know why we're here."

"I… can't let you in, sir," the ATC guard said, shaking his head. Anderson frowned, and on his AR he accessed facial software, confirmed his iD on the mesh, and pulled up the kid's CSV. He was surprised when he saw that Tamarkus had been a Corporal in PsiCorp's security services before mustering out into the private industry. Anderson bounced that the Sentinel beside him.

"Lieutenant," Buchard spoke up, his voice moderately heavy with a French-Canadian accent, "You were PsiCorp. You know the procedure when a child goes nova."

Tamarkus looked between them, swallowing, before putting a finger to his ear. He didn't say anything, and the gesture was completely unnecessary except as a signal to them that he was messaging someone. The guard turned and started pacing, his other hand clenching and unclenching.

He abruptly stopped and turned toward the XCOM team, and Anderson let his hands fall to his sides slowly, right hand hovering over his sidearm. Tamarkus stared for a moment, swallowing, and shook his head.

"Mister Wade says that you can enter," he said after a moment, and exhaled.

"Good call," Anderson replied, and the gate began to retract. The Replica guards lowered their weapons from their shoulders and relaxed, and the lieutenant moved out of their way.

* * *

"You goddamn piece of shit fascists think you can walk into my house and take my daughter! What the hell gives you the fucking right?"

Harlan Wade was not happy to see Anderson.

They stood in the living room module of his house, the XCOM officer staring impassively as the graying human with a short mustache and a tweed jacket paced back and forth, fuming and shouting in impotent, red-faced fury. Aside from Anderson, Sentinel Buchard and Private Vega were present, along with another Replica standing impassively at one side of the room.

"Your daughter went nova in a public school," Anderson replied, his voice calm and level, a far cry from when he had been yelling at the police chief.

"It can be rebuilt," Wade snapped back.

"Its a miracle no one died!" Anderson said, anger creeping into his tone.

"Why do you think two level five Kinetics were working in that building? For the benefits?" Wade said. "Seven psionic children attend that school. All PsiCorps approved, including mine. I personally assigned them to watch in case something like this happened."

"And if we have a nova incident, the psionic responsible is to be confined to-"

"Cooldown and isolation, I know," Wade snapped. "Why do you think my house is this far from the city? Her rooms are all within a shielded isolation module. You want me to show you?"

"Merde," Buchard said, taking a step forward. "You're saying she's in isolation? Now? What level?"

"Six," Wade said. "Maximum possible short of zero gravity or underground with dedicated generators. I'm not stupid."

"Buchard, what's wrong?" Anderson asked.

"I can feel her," the Sentinel replied. "Even through level six shielding. I thought she was just being kept in her room, but…."

"How strong?" Anderson asked, glancing to Wade, who was pacing now, hands clenched.

"If what I'm picking up from a shielded room is any indicator… Energy and Empath are at least a nine. Kinetic eight or nine. Plus more that I can't make out from here. David, this kid is at least an A-tier psionic. She can't stay here."

Anderson turned toward Wade, who was glaring at them with impotent fury, as well as understandable fear. How long had he known that his daughter had these abilities? How long had he tried to protect her, in his own way? He'd likely known that this day would come, where the PsiCorp men in their trenchcoats would come to spirit his daughter away.

It didn't matter how much he loved his child. A-tiers could level city blocks if they went out of control. All psionics were legally required to be trained to control their powers, but A-tier psionics and higher had to be isolated for everyone's safety.

"I need to see her," Anderson said. Wade opened his mouth to object, but at that moment Vega yawned, quite deliberately. The terrified father looked toward the ursa uplift, and stilled any objection he might have voiced.

"This way," he said, his words quiet and defeated.

They walked down a short hallway module toward the permanent part of the house. A heavy metal door lined with glowing psi-shielding amplifiers, resembling strips of bright purple neon lights, stood at the far end of the hallway. Yet another Replica stood vigil beside the door, watching them approach with all the concern of a pile of cheese.

As they approached, Anderson could hear vibrations running through the air, the floor humming under his feet. Wade stopped next to the door and waved a hand over an access panel. Hydraulics hissed, and the humming faded.

Pressure touched the edge of Anderson's awareness. Vega growled slightly, shaking his head, and Buchard took a step back, muttering under his breath.

"How did the other psionic children not sense this?" the Sentinel murmured.

"I think some of them did," Wade replied as the door slowly opened. "They… didn't socialize with her."

"She must have amped after she went nova," Buchard said with a shake of his head. It was a common phenomena. A burst of out-of-control psionics could result in amplified capacity; the early Gifted soldiers in XCOM hadn't awakened to their powers until they'd been tested and "activated" by the Psionic Laboratories, and exercising their abilities in the field had revealed greater and greater capabilities.

Wade stepped through the open door, and the XCOM team followed him, the Replica remaining behind. Another short hallway, this one less bare. Clean carpets, soft colors on the walls, pictures and was a door at the end of the hall, a completely normal one that would be in any residence, and Wade opened it slowly, calling out gently.

He stepped inside, and Anderson followed. The room inside was a fairly sizeable bedroom, and it had all the hallmarks of a child having lived there for years. A large bed with messy, unmade sheets. Various toys strewn about a carpet stained with the periodic spill. Drawings and shapes cut out of construction paper covered the walls. A small terminal with haptic interface and a running screensaver showing cartoon animals on one wall, opposite the bed.

Sitting in the corner, next to the bed, was Alma Wade.

She wore a dark blue sweater and dress. Black hair pooled around the little girl's body, and she huddled into a ball, legs pulled against her chest. Her skin was pale, and her eyes were a dull amber color. She looked up as the adults entered the room, and Anderson could feel the pressure intensify.

"Alma," Harlan asked, kneeling beside his daughter.

"Did bad," she said, her voice a quiet squeak.

"No, no, you didn't," harlan said, shaking his head. "But…" He looked back toward Anderson, who stepped forward and crouched a few feet away from her.

"Alma?" he asked, and she nodded. He could see her eyes were red from crying, and he could only imagine what it must have felt like to have such an agonizing experience, out of control energy ripping through one's body and lashing out at everything nearby….

"My name is David," he said. "Your father has asked me to talk to you."

"Are you XCOM?" she asked, pulling her legs closer, knuckles on her small hands going white.

"Yes, I am," Anderson replied.

"Don't want to go," she said, shaking her head. "Safe here. No one gets hurt here."

Anderson kept his expression neutral even as he considered what to say. He had to be careful with his words. How to explain to an eight year old girl that they could teach her to control her powers? She seemed to have an awareness of what she'd done, and maybe he could use that to convince her. He didn't want to force her to come, for obvious reasons, and-

She abruptly looked up, her eyes widening, and sprang to her feet.

_"Bear!"_ she squealed, all fear and depression abruptly vanishing as she dashed around the XCOM officer.

"What?" Private Vega said, stopping halfway through the door as the little girl stood before him, staring with wide-eyed fascination at the hulking, armored grizzly bear. "Uh. Hi. I'm James."

"I'm Alma," she said, waving a small hand at the massive ursa. A few moments of silence passed as everyone process the abrupt shift in tone.

"Do you, um," Harland said, "Want to go with the bear, Alma?"

"I think…" she said, frowning and turning back toward the adults. She reached up and poked a finger through her hair.

"Will I learn how…" she twisted her finger a little bit to emphasize. "How this works?"

"Yes," Anderson said with a nod.

"Then…" she turned back toward Vega, who shrugged and held out a hand. She took it, and let out a surprised giggle when the ursa picked her up.

Behind them, Anderson could see Buchard, who nodded and put a hand to his ear. A moment later an outbound message went to orbit for a shielded transport to come pick up the child.

"Will I be able to visit her?" asked Wade as Vega moved out into the hallway, crouching and toting the psionic child on his shoulder.

"Not my call, but you should be able to," Anderson replied.

A long pause passed between them as Harlan watched Alma be carried away by Vega.

"Please, take care of her," the older man said as looked toward his daughter.

"We're XCOM, Mister Wade," Anderson said. "We take care of our own, and she's part of us now."

"...thank you."

**End recording**

* * *

**Broker File OS-9934120-12A-SB**

**Recording from suit sensors of Lieutenant Ernesto Zabaleta, PPA Marines, 3rd Battalion, attached USN Einstein**

**Responding to distress signal from PPA colony Mindior**

**Date: 2/17/2170**

Smoke and fire rose from the remains of the main colony. Bodies littered the streets, scorched and molten. The ash and acid stench of the dead would have choked the Marines moving through the remains of the city were it not for their rebreathers. The weight of failure hung more heavily, PPA troops desperately hunting through the buildings, looking ofr survivors from either side: either to rescue the colonists or to punish the slavers who had the gall to assault a human world.

Lieutenant Ernesto Zabaleta looked over the sensor feed, and found himself was startled at the number of life signs in the colony. The violence and destruction across the settlement had convinced them they were assigned to little more than a burial detail. They went in with the grim expectation that many of the colonists would have already been loaded onto the slavers' ships by the time they'd arrived, but more than two-thirds of the population were still down there, though most of them were gathered together into large, tightly-packed groups. Spectral analysis indicated they had been herded into pens for processing and loading, but for some reason the batarians hadn't put them on the ships.

But even more confusing, however, was that there were no batarian life signs at all. Scans from orbit were picking up what looked like a lot of bodies, but no batarians were inside the colony.

The dropships and armored vehicles had landed and Marines stormed out, moving through the colony. Zabaleta led a platoon toward one of the concentrations of civilians, and as he entered the small square where they were gathered he nearly retched inside his helmet.

Hundreds of civilians - men, women, and children - were gathered in large ceramic and metal cages. They were chained, collared, and beaten, with many of them limp and unconscious on the floors of the cages. He saw some with what looked like wires stapled to the backs of their necks. Blood caked the floors of some of the cages, messy bandages applied to gashes and gunshot wounds.

"Get medical and support units down here now!" Zabaleta ordered. "Get those people out of there! Jesus, get them out now!"

As medical units arrived and the captives were pulled out of the cages and freed, Zabaleta led more sweep teams through the colony. Everywhere within the pre-fabricated city, however, he saw corpses. Many human, but many, many more batarian. He stopped counting at two hundred dead slavers. Broken necks, slashes that tore open their guts, countless gunshot wounds, many directly in the center of their heads or throats. Some had been burned by laser or plasma fire, but an inordinate amount had died to mass accelerator fire, as though someone had torn the guns out of their hands and cut them down.

What the hell had happened here? There wasn't enough of a local militia to account for this… utterly one-sided slaughter.

Zabaleta's radio crackled as he swept through a burnt-out residence with a fire team.

"Hammer Actual, this is Two-One," reported one of his squad commanders. "I think you need to see this."

Zabaleta acknowledged, checked Two-One's location on his omnitool - half a kilometer to the east on the other side of the colony - and set out with his fire team. Ten minutes of picking through the blasted pre-fab urban landscape, he stepped out into an open landing pad that the batarians had apparently been using when the fleet arrived. He walked out into the open, and stared in awe.

More than a hundred batarian bodies littered the pad. The alien soldiers had been beaten, shot, stabbed, and set ablaze. They lay in twisted heaps, many with entry wounds in their backs. Blood pooled on the pad, ankle deep in some places. A batarian dropship sat in the middle of the pad, its engines twisted and burned. It was obvious that the batarians had been massacred while fleeing, but the corpses had been dead for at least an hour. They hadn't been running because the fleet had arrived;

They'd been trying to reach the damaged dropship. This massacre had all the characteristics of a total rout.

Zabaleta looked across the pad, and saw First Squad, Second Platoon standing around a pile of cargo containers. In the middle of the group of Marines was a single slight figure, sitting on a box and staring at the dead bodies.

He approached the squad, and got a better look at the sitting person. He was a young human man, maybe in his mid teens. His clothes - typical rugged civilian clothing for colony work - was covered in batarian and human blood. Rough bandages were wrapped around wounds in his arms, legs, and torso. His face was just showing the beginnings of facial hair, and he had dark blue eyes that stared at the pile of dead bodies. A kinetic rifle sat next to him, along with an alloy cannon and a plasma pistol, all covered in blood splatter.

Zabaleta stared at the lone human boy, and a shiver ran up his spine as he approached. His helmet scanners picked up the boy's personal ID.

Adam Shepard.

"Jesus, son," the lieutenant whispered as he approached the battered teenager. "Are you okay?"

They teenager nodded silently, still staring at the corpses.

"What the hell happened here?" the lieutenant asked, and the boy finally looked up. There was something in those blue eyes, something distant and disturbing.

Psionics, Zabaleta realized. The subtle purple flickers of the Gift, raging in eyes hardened with cold fury.

"They deserved to die," Shepard murmured, his voice flat.

A silent, chill wind blew through the colony, and Zabaleta convinced himself that was why he was shaking.

"They _all_ deserved to die."

**End recording**

The Prime finished reviewing the files. She checked local time. A couple of seconds had passed.

"Glyph, bring me all files cross-referencing these events and individuals."

"Yes, Shadow Broker."

She peered over the other forks, thinking in silence. What about these people and items had the Broker been so interested in, before he'd met his end? A dead turian, the resurrection of the quarian species, an XCOM soldier and corporate CEO, quarian linguistics, an A-tier psionic, and a psionic teenager.

Glyph began feeding her the files, and she started the analysis. This was just another mystery to piece together.

EXALT had ensured that she was quite adept at that duty.


	8. Six: Sentinel

The core challenge of the XCOM Psionics Corps has not changed in the century and a half since we were founded. As with all other elements of XCOM, we exist to protect our species from danger. Our focus, however, is entirely on the Gift. We exist not simply to police its use, but to identify those who possess the Gift and teach them how to use their power responsibly.

Our challenge is not to simply identify and train, but also to protect the majority of our species and the larger galaxy from those who either cannot contain their powers or are willing to use them for destructive ends. But we must remain vigilant, and not only against the overt threats, for it is perilously easy for us to fall into abusing our authority.

We are XCOM. We protect mankind. We do not rule it.

**Opening speech of XCOM PsiCorps Admiral Mikhail Romanov at the 150th PsiCorps Founding Anniversary Dinner**

* * *

_**Chapter Six: Sentinel**_

The incident zone was on the outskirts of one of Eden Prime's major colonial arcologies. The long, smooth-sided, blade-shaped spires of the central structure rose over the wide green expanses of terraformed forests and machine-tended fields. At ground level the towering buildings were surrounded by a disc of urban infrastructure, a mixture of permanent multi-story buildings and the low, flat octagons and rectangles of prefabricated colony modules. This arcology bore the gold, red, and green stripes of the South Atlantic Federation. The sun was setting, bloody gold light washing over the arcology.

The fugitive dashed along the rooftops of the outer urban disc, leaping between module stacks and prefab buildings with purple light streaming off her. She was panting and sweating, dark hair flying out behind her. Red and black tattoos, many slashing and vicious shapes, stood out on pale exposed skin around her stomach, neck, and arms.

She'd slipped the barricades and SAF troopers guarding the locked section of the arcology with some careful jumping, a cheap EM cloak that spoofed the equally-cheap security drones patrolling the upper rooftops, and some rough but functional kinetic boosting with her psionics to give her jumps that extra distance. One set of obstacles dealt with, giving her the time and space to think on what to do next.

At least until the PsiCorps Sentinel had jumped onto the rooftop behind her.

He'd landed quietly from an armor-assisted jump, a specter of matte gray armored fabric and artificial muscle beneath lightweight vahlenite plating, clad in a long psi-shielding coat that clung around his upper body and was secured at the waist, flapping loosely down to his shins. Face was hidden behind an angular collapsable helmet, and at his waist was a laser pistol. On the upper arms of his coat were glowing, holographic projections of a purple sunburst surrounding a white eye: the sigil of XCOM PsiCorps.

There was only the one Sentinel, but every Sentinel had a team; everyone knew that Sentinels worked with a dangerous team of specialists who backed them up. It was one of the things all the vids and sensory dramas and sims agreed on.

So she bolted the moment she saw him, leaping off the rooftop and channeling her psionics to cushion her landing two stories down on the next roof amid a cloud of purple light. It was shaky holding together that much focus and energy, but she was getting better at it. Yesterday had just been a slip-up. A heated argument. A brief loss of control.

She kept trying to convince herself of that. It helped her to not think about the bodies and the screaming.

The fugitive dashed across the rooftop, changing directions multiple times and running through different module stacks. SAF construction was haphazard in many points; the rooftops were littered with irregular shipping crates, prefab structures, and HVAC and comms equipment. She jumped over barriers, weaved around buildings, and twice leapt to another rooftop with a burst of kinetic energy.

And everytime she looked back, he was on the rooftop with her, about ten to fifteen meters back, keeping pace.

"What the hell, asshole?" she muttered between pants. She would have killed at the moment to have some real Mental talent, if only to feel him for a psychic aura. Not all Sentinels were psychics, but if she knew what he could do… Or if he even had abilities or was just wearing some fancy tech or biomods….

She put on speed, desperation giving her the energy to keep moving. She channeled more power around her; her Internal abilities were limited to slight boosts to strength or speed, but her Energy talents could make up for that lack by manipulating the kinetic energy of her body. That was a lot more dangerous, but the Sentinel was hugging her ass almost as tightly as her pants.

She peeled ahead, leaving the long-coated specter of PsiCorps behind. Minutes of flat-out running and jumping passed, her head moving on a swivel to watch her surroundings. Where was the Sentinel's support? She kept expecting to spot the cloaked shimmers of next-gen HULU drones, or the bounding figures of FENRIS robo-hounds. She watched for the inevitable pack of PsiCorps stormtroopers in Zephyr flightsuits dropping down on all sides, or a Voidranger with a sniper drifting overhead ready to put a plasma beam through her head.

But there was nothing, which was almost more worrying. She bounded down the side of a building, hopping from external scaffolding and fire escapes down into an alley. She was in an industrial zone, prefab factories and low warehouses dominating the area, so she kept moving for a while, checking behind her for the Sentinel. She didn't see him anymore, and wondering if she'd really lost him or if he'd just somehow tagged her with a tracker.

Finally, she came to a halt in an alley between a pair of looming warehouses. The air was cool, the sun had finally descended past the horizon. In this part of the Eden Prime, dusk came with cool mists settling down over the landscape, and distant haziness wreathed the buildings, turning lights into glimmering auras. She swept the area, her AR showing electrical sources and moving objects, but nothing beyond a few bits of trash. Except-

A burst of movement, and she channeled her energy, rough and violent pulses of purple wreathing her hands. For a moment, she remembered the sheer rush of energy that had flowed through her yesterday during the argument, before exploding, but she fought to control and direct it at the movement-

And dragged it back as she saw the big gray cat staring at her a couple of meters away. Its back was raised, ears flat and mouth open in a hiss, but beyond that it was… just a damn cat. A big one, maybe totaling at ten to twelve kilos, with long, bushy hair and pale green eyes. It was perched on a soot-stained crate discarded at one end of the alley, and yowled at her before jumping up a couple of meters to an air-conditioning unit overhead and glaring at her.

The fugitive let the raging energy die down and fade away, plunging the alley into misty darkness again, and shook her head, leaning against the wall and breathing hard for a few moments.

"I nearly made a rug out of you," she muttered, and forced some more energy through her body. She had done this often enough to have a good understanding of her limits, and could guess how far she could go before the energy started giving her "psi-high" at which point things started becoming… trippy.

Pushing off the wall, she began to run again, watching for anymore pursuit.

The cat stared after her for a few moments, and then leapt up seven meters to the rooftop, and started pacing after her in the mists.

* * *

"Has the district been cleared?" the Sentinel asked as he jogged across the rooftops, letting the Atlas low-profile suit take up most of the slack while he rested his taxed reserves. Too much enhancement was never a good thing, and while he could keep low-level boosting ongoing for a long time, he didn't want to draw upon too much psionic energy. Psi-high was a nasty thing when it resulted from Internal overuse, especially in a psionic as strong as him.

"Industrial zone, not many people around besides a few homeless and security," replied Sergeant McTavish. He had to yell a bit over the hum of the Voidranger's engines as it circled overhead. The Sergeant was not particularly keen with direct messaging, preferring vocal communication unless the situation required otherwise. "We've sent a general alert to the whole district. Anyone still there is either not connected to the mesh or too stubborn to pull out."

"I don't think we'll need it," the Sentinel said with a shrug. "I'm pretty sure I can talk Knight down once she tires herself out."

"You know what's real exhausting, sir?" McTavish asked. "A laser right through the upper thigh."

"You're not shooting her," the Sentinel growled.

"Oh, I've got a direct line on her from up here," McTavish replied. "Give me the word and I'll put her down. Not like she can't get a new leg or sleeve into a new body once her time's up."

"Don't shoot her," the Sentinel repeated.

"Sir, she killed fourteen people when she went nova. Dumped seventeen more in the hospital!" McTavish's growl echoed down the line. "Thank God all of them had stacks..."

"Knight's a stupid kid who didn't go to PsiCorps when she first manifested," the Sentinel replied. "And last thing we need is a psychic whose strongest memory of PsiCorps is us shooting her leg off."

Especially one this strong. She was B-tier, minimum, with some serious Energy/Kinetic chops. She could be a serious asset if he could convince her to stand down and go in for training. But more than that, PsiCorps had a reputation. Rumors and conspiracy theories abounded hinting that they were some secretive, sinister cabal, and media portrayal was a mixed bag of corruption and heroism, but the simple fact was that PsiCorps was a police force whose core mission was protecting and training psychics.

That, and he just didn't want another kid to get killed because they couldn't control their powers.

"Garm?" he asked as he followed the fugitive discreetly. The Sentinel could easily see through his partner's implants to track the girl, but he preferred to keep talking with his team.

"Knight's getting tired," the other Sentinel reported, his voice thick with Scandinavian accent. "Put on the speed, Shep. She's about to hit the edge of this arcology section. Things will get interesting."

"Get the arc throwers ready," Shepard replied.

"What happened to not shooting her?" Garm asked.

"I want Knight alive," the other Sentinel said. "But she's a dumb kid who went nova in a shopping mall because of an argument with her boyfriend. Be ready to shock her if it goes bad."

"Copy that," Garm said with a yowling chuckle. "Arc Thrower's primed. She's close to the edge."

"Big Sky, illuminate her."

* * *

She was running along the edge of the industrial area, close to a wall dividing it off from a series of residential apartments. She was likely plotting the best path to get over the wall and out of the sight of PsiCorps when white light blinded her. She skidded to a halt, both hands flying up to protect her eyes from the Voidranger that had finally shown itself.

"Jennifer Knight," an amplified voice called behind her, and she turned away from the dropship that was covering her. She glared daggers at the Sentinel as he leapt onto the rooftop after her, his pace quick but not hurried.

He could see fear, anger, and resignation warring in her features. Purple light flickered around her head, and the wind blew her black hair into wild tousles. Knight clenched her firsts, hands trembling.

But she didn't attack.

He could work with that.

A twitch of his finger, triggering his omnitool, and his helmet folded down and back, exposing his face from the mouth up and ears forward. His features were chiseled and handsome, with a dark, close-trimmed beard and hair shaved close. Cold blue eyes peered back at the psionic fugitive.

"My name is Shepard," he offered, and took a step closer. Knight leaned back, the light flickering a bit sharper, but did not move. "Major Adam Shepard, PsiCorps Sentinel."

"I guessed that much," she growled. "Could hear your jackboots the entire time you were chasing me."

Shepard didn't rise to the bait. He checked his AR, and could see Garm approaching from Knight's left side as he talked to her. With the floodlight beaming down fromt hat direction, she was effectively blinded.

"They only sent one of you?" Knight asked, and the corner of her mouth quirked up. Bravado in the face of fear. "After what I did to that shopping mall? You've got a quad."

"What happened isn't something you should be proud of," Shepard replied, noting the krogan euphemism. It matched the file he'd read. Knight had good grades in school, but she had also been running with a bad crowd even before manifesting. Active interests in government, political science, and sociology, but also affiliation with anarchist groups and gangs. Some criminal offenses, but nothing serious. At least until yesterday.

"I'm not," she said, her smile fading. "I didn't want to hurt anyone."

"Thirty-one people might disagree with that," he replied. "You're lucky the ones who were killed had stacks. No one suffered permanent death."

"Yeah, or you'd kill me, right?" Knight asked, her posture shifting forward a bit as anger rose up. "Sentinels only play nice as long as there's no gravestones."

He didn't respond, but she was right to a degree. If someone had died when she'd cut loose this morning, then he would have been a lot more aggressive; McTavish would have been cleared to take her leg off. If she'd done more than run, he wouldn't have even bothered talking. One didn't play games when a psychic went violent. But he would have still tried to avoid killing her if possible.

"What happened yesterday was an accident," he said, keeping his tone calm. "Making us chase you down was a problem, but you didn't hurt anyone once you ran. We noticed that."

"You would have sniped me hours ago if I tried fighting back," she snarled. "I'm not stupid."

"Then why run?" he asked.

"Because…" Knight's fingers tightened, and the psychic light intensified for a moment before she dragged it back under control. "Because I wanted to be left alone! You know how long I've been trying to keep this secret? Four months, six days, twelve hours, nine minutes! And I knew the moment I told anyone I had the Gift, you PsiCorps fuckers would come for me!"

Her glare intensified, and the power flared again. A surprising amount of control for an untrained psychic, but if her words were right she had been living with it for a while.

"I knew I would never have a normal life again!"

"That's true," Shepard said, keeping his tone gentle. "Your power makes you special. Do you know how I learned I had the Gift?"

"I don't care," she snapped.

"Batarians attacked Mindoir," he explained, taking a couple of slow steps toward her when she didn't reply. "I don't know if you were old enough to remember when that happened. My family died, gunned down by the slavers. Next thing I knew, the power was pouring through me. People were screaming. They were dying."

Knight's expression softened for a moment, but her fingers stayed clenched.

"I stopped them," Shepard continued. "I don't really remember how, but I used my powers. I fought the batarians and protected my colony until they fled. When the PPA came to retake the colony, they found me. I joined XCOM."

He took another step forward. Shepard didn't want to hurt her, but he mitigated his sympathy and kept ready to act; yesterday had been a textbook case of why one went to XCOM when one started manifesting. At least she looked like she was calming down.

"If you want to be left alone we can help you with that," he said. "There are options if you don't want to use your powers. But I can promise you, those are going to be very limited if you keep running or fighting."

He saw his moment, and held up an empty hand, an offering to her. His other hand went to his side, detaching the sidearm.

"What happened was an accident, but that's no reason to let that destroy your life," he said. "I want to help you, Jennifer."

She stared at his hand for a moment, then looked back up toward him. The psionic light flared up again around her, and her emotions warred. He could see a vicious, defiant spirit there, but also intelligence and rationality. Half of her wanted to fight or flee, while the other half was listening. He could only hope that the latter won out, because if the former did so, someone was likely going to die tonight.

She stared at him for several long seconds, and the light suddenly faded.

"Fuck it," she said, her tone quiet and defeated. "You've got a point, Shepard." She sank down to a sitting position on the rooftop. "No more running."

He let out the breath he'd been holding, and quietly holstered the pistol. He walked toward, hands again at his side.

"You made the right decision," he said as he approached.

"The only decision, you mean," she muttered. She looked up at him as his omnitool lit up, and a set of handcuffs flashed into existence. She held up her hands. "Yeah, I'm familiar with this part."

As he restrained the young woman, the floodlight from the Voidranger shifted away, and the aircraft descended. That also let her see who had been approaching her.

"Oh, fuck," she said as she saw the gray-furred cat crouching near the edge of the rooftop, staring at her. "That's how you were following you planted a tracker, but you were using a smart cat."

"Hell of a smart cat, yeah," a low, gruff voice with a Scandinavian accent replied, and the cat abruptly leaned back, setting onto its rear legs. The forelegs crossed over its chest in an oddly humanlike motion, and one of the paws - actually a small humanlike hand - hefted a compact, narrow, boxy weapon that resembled a blunted handgun. "Should have let me shock her, Shepard."

"You have an uplifted cat?" Knight asked, eyes widening for a moment before she chuckled. "I knew PsiCorps was weird, but…."

"He relies on me to be the brains of the pair," Garm replied. His voice was an odd mix of catlike yowls and a completely normal, undistorted human voice thanks to the translator hidden around his neck, underneath his long fur.

"I tolerate you, Garm," Shepard said, pulling Knight up to her feet. "Like a person tolerates venereal disease or corrupted AR code."

"You never compliment me that way! I should be flattered," Garm exclaimed.

"I had to be run down by a viking cat and nicest Sentinel in PsiCorps," Knight muttered as the Voidranger descended toward the rooftop.

"Hah!" Garm replied, pacing around Knight And Shepard. "You'd disagree if you were on Mindoir. If you get the chance, download an XP from one of the colonists there. You'll see very quickly what my partner can do when he's angry."

He stopped and stared at her with his eyes. The intellect behind those slit, pale green orbs was intense and unnerving.

"And you'll understand that surrendering to Shepard before he gets violent was the smartest move you've ever made, kid."

"Garm, enough," Shepard said, shaking his head. The cat knew he didn't like being reminded of the raid. The Voidranger's engines were rapidly drowning out everything else as it approached, swinging around to expose the rear loading ramp. "Let's get aboard."

"Hey, cat," Knight abruptly said as the ramp lowered. "You do know you're named after a _dog_, right?"

"I am named after the _guardian_ of _Hel_, little girl," the uplifted cat replied with a snort. They started walking up the ramp.

"Besides, I respect my canine brethren." He waved a hand dismissively. "Look at this one. Trying of accuse me of being speciesist! I Might have to quote from the Poetic Edda to show you what my name-"

"Ah, crap," McTavish called from inside the Voidranger. "Someone brought up his religion again, didn't they? Get the little one some nip before he starts that bullshit..."

* * *

_XCS Market Garden_ orbited over Eden Prime, a silver sword that kept position over the Maria de los Angelos arcology where the drama had erupted. Jennifer Knight had been transferred to the _XCS Excalibur_ for containment and cooldown, and now the Voidranger carrying Shepard, Garm, and their support team was docking with their home frigate.

_Sir, I don't think that was wise,_ Sergeant McTavish messaged Shepard as they walked off the Voidranger and across the cargo hangar of the XCOM frigate. They were trailed by four other XCOM soldiers wearing heavier tactical Atlas armors, the modern successors of the older Titan suits. Garm was walking among them, now clad in a loose-fitting olive green XCOM jumpsuit-sweater, laughing at something one of the troopers was saying.

_That was my call, Sergeant,_ Shepard replied, glancing at the Scottish-born soldier looming next to him. McTavish wore an olympian body, like many XCOM troopers, this one built big and brawny. His head was clean-shaved save a short mohawk down the center if his scalp.

The hangar was a fairly small one, as XCOM ships went. With the exception of a small set of current-gen FAFNIR drones kept in recessed compartments on the hull - a Citadel design decision XCOM had incorporated - the hangar was devoted entirely to the arming and maintenance of the _Market Garden's_ pair of Voidrangers, as well as its small compliment of troopers. it was a bit cramped, with the two Voidrangers occupying about half the space in the bay, the second one being serviced by a dozen crewmen and drones while Shepard's was being inspected by the same. The room was filled with the hissing, whirring, and clatter of machinery, and the aroma of a dozen lubricants, chemicals, and acrid smoke filled the air.

C_an't exactly keep you alive if you get in arm's reach of a Kinetic Eight, sir,_ McTavish replied. _One raised barrier and you're stuck in with someone who can liquefy you._

_I understand, Sergeant,_ Shepard replied as they reached the elevator. _We'll discuss this later._

_Yeah, that'll be fun,_ McTavish replied, his words accompanied by enough sarcasm that Shepard rolled his eyes.

"Good luck with the Captain, sir," the sergeant spoke aloud, and turned to the troops. "Okay, to debrief." He waved a hand to cut off the annoyed grunts and groans. "I don't care if you spent the whole mission wanking in the 'Ranger, we've still got to do this. Come on, get to it."

Shepard and Garm stepped into the central elevator, and it began to rise, a curious vertigo feeling washing over the Sentinels as they passed through different gravity fields. The cat had dropped to all fours, tail idly waving back and forth.

"Garm," Shepard started, and the cat let out a quiet yowl before he could continue.

"I know, I shouldn't have brought up Mindoir," the feline Sentinel said. He looked up at Shepard, ears perked up. "But I have to admit, you did a hell of a job to those slaver bastards."

"I lost my _family_ there," Shepard muttered. "I know that doesn't mean much to you, but…."

"Right, I won't bring it up again," Garm replied.

It was true enough. Uplifts often didn't have immediate families, considering many were born in a lab, and Garm was one of the earlier generations of feline uplifts. Of course, early generations sometimes had mental problems; Garm's insistence on following the old Norse pantheon was far from the oddest quirk in the uplift population.

And it explained his fascination with Mindoir. No matter how you cut it, killings hundreds of batarians singlehandedly in a berserk fury would appeal to the old Norse gods. Shepard didn't like thinking on it, but he didn't deny the impact of what had happened there. During the blackout incident, he'd killed annihilated the main strength of the Kor'talav Cartel, the last big batarian slaving cartel in the galaxy, and destroying the majority of their membership had crippled them. The slavers had already been under heavy pressure thanks to the Citadel and humanity stepping up anti-piracy and slavery enforcement, and smashing the last big cartel had devastated the entire "industry." Garm deeply respected Shepard for that, and also because in the process of massacring the Kor'talav Cartel, he'd inadvertently destroyed the Batarian Hegemony.

That had shaken up the galaxy, mostly because of how no one had really expected the Hegemony's implosion. The batarians' government and culture ran heavily on an oppressive caste system, which was technically illegal but barely tolerated by the Citadel for economic and diplomatic reasons, as the batarians made a useful ally in stabilizing the Terminus borders. That changed after 2103 and the meeting with the geth, humanity, and the Citadel. The Council had ordered a cessation of slavery practices, both on moral grounds and because it helped fuel piracy and raiding of colonies.

The Hegemony had told the Council to fuck off. Politely. The Hegemony's economy and culture relied too heavily upon slavery. The Council had responded by sanctioning the hell out of the batarians. Already a pariah among the Citadel species, the Hegemony's struggling economy was only able to keep working with the help of "independent" mercenary, pirate, and slaver groups raiding shipping and bringing in slaves. The Citadel, humanity, and even the geth had intensified anti-pirate operations, steadily destroying pirate and slaver groups and weakening the batarian economy further. No one wanted to start slavery or piracy operations in the ensuing vacuum, as startup costs were a bit too steep, and generally involved kinetic strikes, plasma barrages, and many people with job titles involving the words "psionic" or "commando."

Then Shepard had crippled the Kor'talav Cartel, last major supplier of slaves to the Hegemony, delivering a kick to the foundations of the entire teetering structure.

The Hegemony's economy imploded. Its caste system then exploded a few years later, and the government collapsed. By 2183, there was no Batarian Hegemony, instead replaced by half a dozen warring, independent stellar powers and a number minor revolutionary states that were absorbed by the Turian Hierarchy as willing clients.

So, Shepard's first act of violence, before ever joining XCOM, had killed an interstellar nation-state. He didn't particularly like to advertise that fact.

* * *

_Market Garden's_ comms and briefing room was situated behind the CIC, a spherical room surrounded by psionic and electronic shielding that also served as an emergency survival room and secondary bridge. The only way in was a single door connecting to the CIC, and it had a dozen chairs spaced around platform in the center of the room. It wasn't much room, but then, the frigate didn't have a large crew. Typically only the department heads and senior officers assembled here.

Today there was only Captain David Anderson. He wore a stout, strong, dark-skinned body, closely matching the one he'd been born in, and was clad in an XCOM olive-green jumpsuit-sweater. Anderson was a career Direct Action officer, as were most of the _Market Garden's_ crew. The majority of XCOM ships were Direct Action, even frigates specialized for PsiCorps or Sentinel work like this one. The general mantra was "Sentinels find the problem, Direct Action blows it to hell."

"Captain Anderson," both Shepard and Garm said as they entered, and Anderson nodded. He was staring at a hologram in the center of the room, showing a blue planet wreathed in thick white clouds over eighty percent of its surface.

"Major Shepard, Lieutenant Garm," the captain replied. "Good work down there."

"Thank you, sir," Shepard replied, while Garm hopped into a chair and sat up, cat-style. Shepard checked the local internal mesh, curious about the planet Anderson was studying. His AR returned it immediately: Proteus, a shared human colony in the Artemis Tau cluster.

"Too bad the South Atlantic Federation disagrees," Anderson said with a tired sigh.

"They can stuff it up their ass," Garm yowled.

"We had jurisdiction," Shepard replied with a more polite scowl, sitting down opposite Garm. "They signed the 2180 updated treaty. We had full authority to arrest a psionic criminal."

"The police and SAF military garrison commanders have been messaging me constantly," Anderson said, shaking his head. "Its the usual pissing contest. Maria de los Angelos Police wanted us to advise them on the takedown, but leave it to them."

"We would have been advising a bloodbath," Shepard replied. "Or have a dead kid."

"That and those idiots just let her walk out of the containment zone," Garm added. "What were we going to do, just let her walk away?"

"I'm not criticizing you," Anderson said with a shake of his head. "Like I said, damned good job. You took her down without firing a shot, which is an ideal result for this scenario. And no matter what the locals say, we did everything by the book. I just wanted to let you know the reaction."

He then nodded toward the hologram of Proteus.

"You'll want to get something to eat and some sleep after this briefing," he continued. "Because we're going straight into a hornet's nest."

Shepard and Garm glanced to one another. The cat's ears pulled back a bit, and he yawned, before standing, turning in place, and plopping down in a lazy mass of fur and jumpsuit.

"What's happened?" Shepard asked. "That's Proteus, right?"

"Exactly, Major," Anderson replied. "Files are on the local mesh, you can check them-"

Shepard did so, speeding up his mental processing and coupling that with analysis implants.

Proteus. Garden world, well within habitable range for humans and most other oxygen breathing life. Levo-amino primary life, so most Citadel races could easily live there. Except it was a pure ocean world; closest thing to land was near-surface undersea shelves. Also wracked by constant storms.

Strategic Defense Coalition had found it first, but the Pan Pacific Alliance had swept in shortly afterward. Both sides had initiated colonization behind the sights of their respective weapons, but a couple of years' negotiations had resulted in an amicable colonization agreement. The lack of surface area and violent weather meant that nearly all of the colony structures were submerged. Primary industries were marine research, underwater mining, and marine agriculture; apparently local conditions were conducive to a number of particular engineered marine delicacies that were hard to grow on Earth.

Current population was about a hundred and forty thousand and steadily growing, split about evenly between the two dominant alliances, with independent settlements from the others.

"-whenever you feel like it," Anderson finished as Shepard reverted to normal speed.

"Already done," Shepard said, and Garm snorted.

"Show off," he mrowled.

"Then you know what the general situation is," Anderson replied. He waved a hand, and the globe shifted, cloud layers peeling away and zooming in on a section of continental shelf. A latticework of submerged buildings appeared.

"This is Neo Hengsha, primary SDC colony and capital of their stake on Proteus," Anderson said. "China is the primary backer, although Iran, Singapore, and Thailand are significant investors. Primary exporter of marine agriculture on the planet and SDC's main spaceport. Sixty thousand people live here."

He gestured again, and the globe tracked a few hundred kilometers south toward open ocean.

"That's not our focus. This is."

"Looks like more ocean," Garm said with a indifferent meow.

A marker appeared over the ocean, and next to the globe appeared a new hologram: a trio of metal spheres, interconnected with tubes and latticework. Long, cylindrical modules were attached, along with ballast tanks and a vertical cylinder that was almost certainly an element zero core.

"This facility doesn't officially exist," Anderson said. "Technically, not even XCOM is supposed to know this exists."

There was only one reason Shepard could think of for any of the major powers to hide a facility from XCOM knowledge. He slowed time again, examining the structures closely, and after a moment he recognized the general design and shape of the spheres. He'd spent some time in one after Mindoir, and had put a lot of the Gifted in others after they had lost control of their powers.

"Those are psionic containment spheres," he said. "Those outer layers are to protect against leaks or ruptures?"

"Exactly," Anderson replied.

"SDC's running their own little psi research lab?" Garm mused. "No wonder they'd keep that secret."

"Its not illegal for them to run their own own psi labs," Anderson said with a disapproving frown. "So long as XCOM is allowed to monitor. But they're running this one on their own without XCOM supervision."

"Are we being sent to crash their mind-baking party?" Garm asked, his yowls eager. Shepard frowned himself, not so keen on the idea - at least not without the whole Strike on hand to make sure the SDC didn't try anything stupid. They wouldn't _attack_ the facility, but they would definitely show up to provide disapproving scowls, as well as publicly revealing the site's existence. If SDC tried to stop them, well… opening fire on XCOM personnel was a _terrible_ idea considering their international standing.

"No, we're a bit late on that regard," Anderson replied, and the image shifted. The SDC psi lab was gone, replaced by a few chunks of floating debris. "Someone else attacked the facility and destroyed the whole complex."

Shepard leaned back, scratching his chin. That was bad news. Very bad news.

"I take it SDC informed us of the facility because of its destruction?" he asked, and Anderson nodded.

"They're in a panic, because of the implications," the captain replied. "A colossal breach security, on top of an attack on a base this secret and important. And they believe that the perpetrators are still on Proteus."

"How do they know that?" Shepard asked.

"Because they're blockading the planet and not letting any ships leave the surface," Anderson said, his tone flat, and Shepard sat up.

"Proteus is a shared world," he said. "They can't blockade PPA or independent ships."

"They are," Anderson said, crossing his arms. "So I think you both understand what kind of political shitstorm is about to ensue. The SDC's spinning a number of justifications, but we all know they can't reveal why they're blockading the planet."

Shepard exhaled, because he certainly did. The SDC couldn't exactly tell anyone that they were hunting for someone who had raided their secret, unobserved psionics laboratory. To the other alliances, this would look like an unprovoked blockade of a lucrative resource colony.

That meant war if this wasn't defused fast.

"And the final twist on this this insanity," Anderson added. "SDC doesn't think everyone was killed in the raid."

"Someone snatched their psychics," Garm said, and Anderson nodded.

"SDC thinks that at least some of their psionic trainees were kidnapped, which is why they brought us in," the captain replied. "With the blockade in place, they know that no one's fled the planet with their psychics. But they don't have a skilled psionic pool to draw from. Not like PsiCorps does."

"What's the reaction been?" Shepard asked.

"PPA's scrambling a task force, and the EU is naturally moving to assist," Anderson replied. "A lot of back and forth arguing and accusations. Strike Four is mobilizing to play mediator. And you two have been tapped to help lead the Sentinels trying to find the bastards behind this insanity before the shooting starts."

"Well, naturally," Garm replied. "The powers that be are wise, and recognize talent and expertise."

"So they're sending me in solo?" Shepard asked the cat, and Garm responded by narrowing his eyes and letting loose a hairball hack of a cough.

"You be sure to inspect your boots carefully."

"We need to find the psychics quickly," Anderson added. "Which is why we've had to bring in a specialist."

Garm's head snapped back toward Anderson, ears flattening.

"Not another 'specialist'. I _hate_ babysitting," the cat muttered.

"She has her own escort," Anderson replied. "But this specialist is an extremely powerful Mental. She should be able to find the missing SDC psychics very quickly. You have to keep her safe."

"So, yes, _babysitting_," Garm yowled, tail twitching in unhappy jerks.

"They boarded while you were down taking care of Knight," Anderson continued. "We'll be linking up with the rest of Strike Four and heading for the Eden Prime Array shortly. Get some food and rest. Any questions?"

"Emergency transfer?" Garm asked.

"Denied. Any serious questions?" Shepard shook his head. "Dismissed."

* * *

Garm was unhappy, and didn't try to hide it. Then again, Shepard noted, he was a cat, and unlike humans most uplifts had trouble completely hiding their emotions in their body language. The low sweeping of his tail and turned-back ears made his annoyance clear to everyone as they stepped off the elevator to the crew deck.

"Ugh, I wish we had still had a vermin problem," the cat muttered. "I need to hunt something down and kill it. Slowly."

Shepard said nothing as they walked around the short corridor from the elevator to the mess. They walked through the doorway, just forward of the central elevator, and stepped into the mess just in time to see an entire tray of food get dumped into the gaping maw of a grizzly bear.

The massive, snorting, chomping form wore a standard olive-green XCOM jumpsuit-sweater, and its forearms ended with clawed but decidedly humanlike hands. A plasma cannon sat on the table next to the uplift as he inhaled the food in a stomach-churning display of ursine hunger.

Sitting next to him was a young, pale-skinned woman with black hair pulled back into a braid, also clad in an XCOM jumpsuit-sweater. The sigil of PsiCorps glowed on her upper arms, just like Shepard's, and when his eyes tracked over them he could get a reading on her psionic talent and rating.

He came to a dead halt when he saw a scrolling list of _every_ known psionic talent, none of them ranked less than a seven, and many in the double digits. She sat quietly by the bear, eating her own food with far more control and less eagerness, and ignored the grizzly as he gorged himself.

As the bear set the tray down, his eyes settled on Shepard and Garm, and he abruptly froze.

"Oh, uh, Majo Shefeb," the bear said, and swallowed. "Sorry, sir." He rose to his feet, moving with far more agility than anything that dsize was entitled to, and snapped a sharp salute. The powerful psychic next to him looked up and jumped up as well, matching the bear's gesture.

"Lieutenant James Vega, sir," the bear rumbled. "Me and my partner have been assigned to your command."

"At ease," Shepard said, matching their salute, and he turned to the young woman. "You're the specialist team I was told about?"

"Yes sir," the woman replied, her voice soft, but her smile was eager and genuine. Now that their eyes met, he could see that they were glowing faintly with the color of sunlit amber, another sign of immense psionic power. She held out her hand, and he shook it, keeping his knees steady as he _felt_ the surge of psionic energy running through her skin, a wave of raw, vibrating power.

"Lieutenant Alma Wade, sir. Pleased to meet you, Major."

* * *

**For additional information on XCOM and Psionics, see the relevant entries in Vigil: Codex and Supplemental Information.**

* * *

**_Author's Notes:_** I've never written a cat before. Writing Garm was amusing.

If Shepard's outfit sounds like the typical Warlock's outfit from Destiny, yes. Sentinels rock the Warlock.

Yes, Jennifer Knight is Jack/Subject Zero, who actually lived a decent life in this setting.


	9. Seven: Proteus Landing

The turian-designed Exo synthetic frames were originally designed as an emergency survival system to protect the brain of mortally-wounded soldiers - and as militant as the turians were, they had a lot of those. Enterprising engineers developed combat models of the Exo sustainment platform, effectively allowing mortally-wounded soldiers who volunteered for the duty to return to the battlefield. Refinements to the design eventually allowed Exo-sustained turian minds to function as fully-functional members of society. It wasn't until humans arrived with their Ethereal-derived direct brain-uploading technology and cortical stacks, however, that Exos became fully synthetic, with the turian brain being uploaded into a cyberbrain.

In modern turian society, Exos are broadly restricted to those who suffered lethal injuries or diseases, and it is uncommon to see a turian who uploaded into an Exo without dying beforehand. A strong cultural stigma exists toward those who haven't "earned their metal." And frankly, I can see why people would upload into Exos; no issues with diseases, eat as much as you want, and with the right mods you can smash down walls.

**-Doctor Alvaro Mendes, Professor of Synthetic Sociology, University of Titan**

* * *

_**Chapter 7: Proteus Landing**_

* * *

"Found 'em yet?"

"No. Just like when you asked me two minutes ago."

"Eh. Bored."

It was a rare sunny day on Proteus, the thick white clouds parting to let light onto the storm-wracked ocean world. Since about eighty percent of the time the planet was either being hammered by a storm or the sky was obscured by gray rainclouds, the rare clear days saw a significant amount of colonists coming topside to take in the sun. The colony habitats extended viewing platforms above the waves, complete with collapsible furniture and pavilions with automated bars and cafes.

Among the crowds taking in the clear morning were a pair sitting at a small table by the western railing, one staring out over the blue-gray ocean waves while the other stared at a fold-up terminal playing an old 21st century 2D action movie. Neither were really paying attention to the silly gunplay and martial arts occurring on the display; it was mostly just an excuse to not be bothered while they worked, and the terminal projected a local privacy field that distorted their words to outsiders.

The former was a turian, at least in his previous, non-Exo life. Now he had dull gray metal carapace sculpted into a close match to his original narrow, avian features, and blue slashes painted around his glowing blue eyes, nose and down the upper halves of his mandibles. He leaned back in his chair, idly sipping on a cheap fruity slush in an equally cheap memoryfoam cup.

The other, non-bored member of the pair stared blankly at the terminal as she worked. She was human, outward appearance in her mid-twenties, slim, short, and slightly built. She had shoulder-length brown hair, dark brown eyes, and delicate features.

"If you're bored," Alison Young said as she monitored a river of incoming data, "pull up a sim instead of bothering me. Or maybe tap into a feed and help me find this guy."

"You and I both know my limitations," Garrus Vakarian replied. "You're the one with the brain that can process thousands of data feeds at once. I can look at… what, two or three?"

"Then upgrade that stupid Exo brain of yours," Alison replied, not looking up at her partner. Garrus shrugged, slurping his slushie again.

"I'm actually wondering why I decided to come here," Garrus said after a moment. "Turians don't like water. We sink like rocks. Lots of flailing and thrashing. Doubly so when we sleeve into an Exo. Yet here I am on a human colony, covered in water."

"Eh, we'll both sink the same," Alison replied. "Problem with, y'know. No lungs."

"And there's only sixty thousand people living here," Garrus said. "It can't take that long to dig through and find one dockworker. On the Citadel we would have tracked him down in minutes. Neo Hengsha's got a fraction of the population."

"Xin."

"Eh?"

"In Mandarin its Xin Hengsha," Alison said.

"My translator calls it 'Neo'." Garrus said, doublechecking.

"Your translator is shit, then," Alison replied. "Download a better one."

"I prefer Neo."

"Ass," she grumbled, glancing up at the turian with an annoyed smirk.

"One made of twenty-two layers of composite alloys," Garrus replied, shifting in his seat, and slurped his drink again.

"Why do you do that?" she asked, glancing back down to her display and crossing her arms over her chest. "You don't need to drink."

"Neither do you. technically."

"I eat to maintain my pretty complexion," Alison said. "You're one hundred percent machine, not an ounce of meat on you."

"Yet I'm outfitted with a tremendously complex array of tactile, olfactory, and taste sensors that allow me full functionality and sensory capacity," Garrus said, reciting from the operator's manual. "So I can eat as much as I want, taste and smell it all, and not gain a kilo. And then dump it all when I'm full."

"Why not just regurgitate what you've eaten?" she asked.

"Because eeewwww."

She shrugged and then nodded toward his slushie, holding out a hand. He sighed, the sound tinged with a faint whirring, and handed it over.

"Dextro or levo?" she asked, looking into the cup.

"Does it matter?" he asked, and she shrugged before taking a sip.

"Not bad," she said, and handed it back before resuming her search. "To answer the original question, it's taking so long because I'm not supposed to have access to Xin Hengsha's security network."

"Ne-"

"Shut it. Hengsha's security has every man they can muster hunting across the station, so I have to be very careful lest their security infomorphs spot me tapping their network. Its taking time."

"Second question," Garrus said, holding up a finger. "What do we do when we find the target?"

"We didn't pack those weapons as presents for needy orphans," Alison replied, and Garrus shook his head.

"Because Hoplite Security LLC isn't contracted to provide law enforcement for the government of Neo Hengsha," Garrus continued. His head rang faintly as Alison smacked him on his metallic fringe. "So if we go after the people responsible for this whole mess, the police aren't going to be too happy with us. Especially because, well, the whole top-secret psychic thing." He paused. "We should have gone with Hyperion for the name."

"Both Hyperion and Desperado were already taken," Alison replied. "I wanted to go with Valkyrie, but XCOM already has a monopoly on the Norse mythology."

"But… Hoplite? I know, human history, but the name just sounds-"

"Got him," Alison said, sitting up.

"Patch me," Garrus replied, swiveling toward her. A moment later, data feeds spilled over his optical inputs.

They showed a lean, black-haired and yellow-skinned human - Asian origin, if Garrus remembered his human biology right - wearing a blue dockworker's jumpsuit pushing another human down a maintenance corridor. Garrus checked the source: Maintenance Corridor 33-A-West, two kilometers south of their position.

"You certain?" Garrus asked, looking at the second human. Male, middle-aged in appearance, blond, close-clipped beard, wearing a generic brown business suit. Their target had a small kinetic pistol pointed at the second human's lower back.

"Fac-rec and local mesh signature match Edgar Chen," Alison replied. "And Edgar Chen matches the time window for the attack. Unless someone's puppet-socking or sleeved into him."

Garrus checked the records on Chen again. Chinese born, 2142. Joined the SDC Navy in 2160, mustered out after five years of service, went to university for a doctorate in Marine Biology. Moved to Proteus in 2181. Couldn't find a job in his field, going by employment records, so he had found a job as a dockworker.

Visual records showed him returning at one of the Neo Hengsha docks on a personal underwater transport within their projected time window regarding the attack on the hidden SDC psionic lab. The records were wiped at the time he returned, but that was little obstacle to someone with Alison Young's talents and connections. Her more intensive investigation turned up a possible link to EXALT through suspicious data channels.

"Who's the hostage?" Garrus asked.

"Fac-rec running," she replied. "Pinging mesh and local spimes. Huh. Marshal Disler."

"Who?"

"Armacham Technology Corporation's local VP in charge of Proteus operations, on both sides of the pond," Alison said, concern working into her voice. "Not sure where or how Chen grabbed him, but…."

"Al, a question," Garrus said as he checked up on Disler. "ATC's operations on Proteus are mostly marine vehicle and weapons research, and contracted aerospace support."

"Yeah," Alison said with a nod. "What's up?"

"If you're running marine tech and aerospace support, why does your VP in charge have no education or experience in either field? Disler's got a Master's in Microbiology, Cellular Synthesis, and Psionic Biology."

Alison frowned, thinking.

"He's connected with SDC's lab," she said after a few moments. "ATC was likely supporting the lab operations, maybe contracting out psychic expertise."

She nodded, and stood.

"Okay. Let's go grab him before Hengsha police wakes up," she said, scooping up her terminal and shutting off their local privacy field.

"And find out what he wants with Disler," Garrus added as he rose more slowly, finishing his slushie.

EXALT, Armacham, and psionics, on a planet blockaded by the SDC and with a PPA and XCOM fleet on the way.

"Really, why the hell did I decide to come here?" Garrus muttered as he crushed his cup and tossed it into the trash.

"Because I fluttered my eyelashes and asked sweetly," Alison replied, and Garrus loosed a mechanical snort.

* * *

Transition toward the Athens system had occurred a few hours ago after the _Market Garden_ had rendezvoused with Strike Four at the wormhole array, and the entire task force was a couple of hours from their destination, having long since started deceleration burn. The PPA's own response fleet was well ahead of them by about an hour, but they had agreed to wait within Athens' Kuiper Belt until XCOM arrived.

Shepard's muse woke him after a few hours' worth of sleep, and he ate heartily once he'd awoken; psionics ate up nearly as many calories as biotics. Between Shepard and Vega, they were putting a dent in the ship's food supply. Afterwards, he started down into the frigate's cargo area - alternately known as "infantry country" because that was where the frigate's troops did exercises. It was also where the frigate's simulated range and infantry wardroom were situated, between the Voidranger deck and Engineering.

The range was little more than a mid-sized cargo compartment on the opposite side of the bay from the wardroom, save for the fact that it was next to the ship's armory and featured a simulated firing range that could stretch out to up to five false kilometers. While it was entirely possible for the troops to slide into a simulspace environment on the _Market Garden's_ computer network for training, the range and its test-firing was as much about properly calibrating the actual weapons as it was about maintaining marksmanship.

Shepard checked out a set of firearms from the armory maintenance tech, with the exception of his personal sidearm, which he maintained himself. He didn't expect anyone was using the range at this point, so when the door hissed open he was caught off-guard to see Lieutenant Wade test-firing a pistol. The weapon mimicked all the usual humming of a charging plasma weapon, while the range itself matched the burst and whoosh of superheated air ripping down a corridor at moving targets a dozen meters away.

"Lieutenant Wade," he said as she stepped up to the booth beside her, setting his plasma and fusion rifles down and activating the simulator.

"Major Shepard, sir," she replied with a deferential nod, but kept her eyes on her sights and continued firing. He couldn't tell if she'd known he was approaching before he'd entered the room, but she likely had. Her Empathy rating meant that she could likely pick up everyone on the ship passively, and determine their thoughts to exact detail if she concentrated.

Shepard hadn't spoken much with Wade since the meeting in the mess. There was the usual military small-talk: pleased-to-meet-you's and looking-forward-to-working-together's. After he'd eaten quickly, Shepard had left the mess for his quarters in officer country in the frigate's upper deck. And while there, he'd had his muse assemble Alma Wade's service history.

What his assistant VI reported on Wade's background was an example of exactly why he had been so gentle with Knight yesterday. A good kid with uncontrolled strength and rampant empathic powers; according to her father's interview after she'd been taken in by PsiCorps, she'd had a deeply troubled experience growing up, with hallucinations and hysteria that grew worse as she grew older, until she had gone nova in school. It was the reason Harlan wade had commissioned his own psionic containment shelter for her. Under PsiCorps education, however, she'd learned to control her powers, and eventually had gone through advanced psionic training on the PsiCorps Academy on Titan before being admitted into XCOM at seventeen. Three years of assignments mostly relegated to the inner colonies, and most of those low-risk, many as part of research or disaster-response teams.

That fact ran completely against her psionic ratings, which were impressively high across the board. He would have expected a psychic at her tier would have been working on the much more dangerous border sectors where her powers would be put to excellent use aganst threats from the Terminus. A-tiers were rare and always dispatched to the sharp end when they weren't put on training rotation.

"Is this your first field operation?" Shepard asked her as he started a medium-range program and set his plasma rifle to test-fire.

"Sir? Oh, um, no sir," she replied, pausing in her firing before resuming. "I've been sent down to the surface before with fireteams."

"Hostile worlds?" Shepard asked as he started tracking and shooting targets, in the form of glowing globes that slid back and forth at a simulated hundred meters and out.

"Human controlled," she replied. "I was usually asked to help with damage recovery. A few times we went down to locate psionic criminals or runners who went nova."

"You've done this type of operation before?" Shepard asked.

"Yes, though…" she frowned. "It wasn't easy. Disaster-response was simple. Pick up this piece of debris. Clear that obstruction. Simple enough, especially in evacuated areas where all the fear and pain didn't interfere."

"And tracking missions?" Shepard asked, plugging two targets in rapid succession.

Alma frowned again, shook her head, and fired several shots.

"Locating one person in a city of two hundred thousand isn't easy," she said. "Its kind of cliche, but one colored grain on a beach? Like that. Even with the Gift amping their powers. I usually ended up riding in Voidrangers for days while the ground teams and police tracked the target down and gave me an area to search. Even then I had a hard time finding them unless they evacuated a district. If someone else had the Gift in the area, I would often hit a false positive."

"But you could sweep an entire city if need be," Shepard said, and she nodded.

"Part of my training was actually sweeping colonies to see if anyone was using the Gift. I ended up spotting a bunch of kids and teenagers who were manifesting but hadn't reported in."

"Good to see we're making decent use of your talents," Shepard said, realizing that was probably why Alma wasn't on the front. It made sense to employ a useful asset to pick up manifesting psychics before they went nova in a shopping mall or school.

'Oh, that's not the whole story," Alma abruptly said, and Shepard blinked. She continued talking, as though she hadn't just plucked those thoughts from his head like windborne flower petals. "I'm kind of weak in combat."

"You have an Energy rating of eleven, Internal nine, and Manifestation twelve," he replied with a curious frown.

"And a Mental of thirteen, with Empathy at fifteen," she replied, her tone dropping a bit. "You don't have an Empathy rating to begin with, do you?"

"No," Shepard replied, blasting a target.

"Landing in a city is… a sandstorm, Major," she said. "I learned to turn off passive empathy reading on Titan, but that just shut off the worst of the background noise. I can still see and sense everyone around me, in constant motion. And when fighting starts, serious life-or-death combat…."

She paused, and set her pistol down, ending her simulation. Shepard froze his own sim, and turned to meet her eyes. They glowed, even in the white antiseptic light of the frigate's interior illumination.

"Combat is a terrifying experience," she said. "Horror, pain, anger, pants-shitting fear, worry, exhilaration, bloodlust…. all of them run rampant when battle begins, sir. They're hard to lock out completely." She closed her eyes for a moment, shaking her head. "I was observing a team that went after a psychic. A criminal, Energy Five, but he knew how to use it. One of the Sentinel's teammates engaged him, and the psychic burned him alive. Cooked him in his armor. They saved his stack, but….

"I woke up on the deck of the Voidranger, curled up in a ball, two unconscious medics beside me. I'd been catatonic and pissing myself, but I was still pumping out enough unfocused energy that I knocked them out even when they sedated me."

She picked up the pistol and removed its power core, preparing to take it back out and stow it. As she did so, Shepard came to an understanding.

"That's why you have Vega partnered with you," he said, and she nodded, a slight smile suddenly appearing on her face.

"James was part of the team that recruited me," she said. "He and I have been friends since. He was with me during most of my training. He's officially my bodyguard, but unofficially, he helps keep me calm."

"He's… what, your sanity bear?" Shepard asked, and she let out a quiet laugh.

"The grizzly isn't there because of fuzzies, sir," Alma replied. "And emotionally sensitive or not, I'm still an A-tier. I rate a bodyguard."

"An ursa uplift who can pack tank weapons is a hell of a bodyguard," he admitted, and she nodded.

"Just… don't ask him to dance. Especially not talking and dancing at the same time. He'll put you in the infirmary if you try to brawl with him."

"I'll take that under advisement, Lieutenant," Shepard replied.

* * *

The interior of Xin Hengsha's underwater habitat consisted of dozens of linked-together, contractor-assembled structures intermixed in a labyrinth of modules, access corridors, and machinery. Maintenance Corridor 33-A-West was yet another in a long, proud line of dull, boring passages in Xin Hengsha's hulls.

This particular passage was a component of the city's water purification system - both desalination and wastewater filtration. It was mostly automated, with a few civilian workers and security on hand, but they were easily tracked by their mesh implants and the heavily-networked machinery, and Garrus and Alison were able to easily avoid them and bypass the plant's security. Edgar Chen shouldn't have had access to this part of Xin Hengsha's infrastructure either, but that wasn't surprising.

The turian and human moved through the corridor, weapons in hand. Garrus carried a mass accelerator carbine with a quickchange scope that was linked to his optics, letting him move from close-quarters sights to long-range precision at a thought. He wore a suit of dark blue and black tactical armor fitted around his Exo frame, giving him the appearance of a tall, lean turian assault drone with glowing blue eyes. It was an outfit that was quick to attach and disassemble, thankfully; in a pinch he could simply disengage it and run, the pieces falling off his body.

Alison wore dark gray and black mottled armor, heavy and tough and unsubtle; the armor wasn't backed by powered artificial muscle, as her own construction allowed her to get far more force in her movements by herself than anything short of heavy Atlas suits. Aside from a laser pistol and tactical-modded omnitools on both arms, she carried a snub-nosed Tengoku-designed fusion rifle. A deadly weapon in the close quarters they were expecting to fight in, but Garrus didn't like the spread on the fusion rifle's plasma burst, nor was he comfortable with the half-second charge time between shots.

Still, if anyone had the reaction times needed to time their shots correctly, it was her, so he let her take point while he covered their backs.

_Mesh tracking shows he passed through this room seventeen minutes ago,_ she messaged Garrus as they reached a hatch leading into one of the pumping rooms.

_Disler's position hasn't changed?_ Garrus asked, and she shook her head, sliding into position to breach.

_Local mesh isn't showing me anything inside this room,_ she added. _No cameras or other sensors. Spime data is giving me proximity on Disler._

_But not Chen, obviously._ The ubiquitous computers that made up the "mesh" of constantly communicating sensors, detectors, monitoring equipment, spimes, and nodes that served as the infrastructure of modern networks were a crucial tracking tool, but only against people who didn't really have a good grasp of information security. Chen was hiding his presence, spoofing local sensors and mesh communications, but he hadn't done the same for Disler.

Alison waved her omnitool over the locked hatch, and a moment later it hissed faintly, seals releasing. She stepped forward, pushing it open, and Garrus was a step behind her.

The chamber was another pumping room. Long, choked with working machinery, silver-white pipes and gunmetal gray boxes several meters tall. The pulse and hum of running water and working pumps vibrated through the floor, a constant industrial heartbeat. The lights were dim, yellow electronic strips along the ceiling, dark shadows above the pipes criss-crossing overhead.

This was all peripheral. Both Garrus and Alison locked their eyes on the middle of the room, and the bloody corpse hanging from its ankles.

Marshal Disler had died violently, his blood covering the ragged tears along his neck and face, chunks of cut and torn flesh visible on his exposed chest. He hung a few meters into the room, suspended from a pipe overhead. His coat and shirt were ripped open, blood pooling under his head as he slowly swung in a slight arc back and forth.

Between one step and another, Garrus was analyzing the crime scene. Alison stepped to the side, sweeping the room while he went to work.

It wasn't too dissimilar from when Galroon Paavaloorando had gone on his killing spree a few years back, chopping up twelve people on the Citadel while using his diplomatic status to evade detection. He'd strung up the bodies much the same way, although he usually stripped them naked and had used far cleaner cutting tools. According to him, it had been as much about the aftermath as selling the victim's organs. Garrus wasn't sure what the elcor's motivations were beyond that point, as their confrontation had ended in gunfire and a string of explosions.

Dilser's killer - likely Chen but they couldn't rule out someone else - had used vastly cruder tools. Heavy tearing across the cheeks and neck, strips of stringy flesh hanging loose. Mastication and tearing, which meant teeth. Omnivore incisors rather than canines or molars. Human teeth, likely, tearing flesh clear of the body. By comparison, the chest wounds were rough knife hacks, no flesh missing, just peeled back. Some tearing at the back of the neck, where a cortical stack would traditionally be installed.

Garrus checked the floor. Blood trails, thick and bright red, leading from Disler's corpse, and pooling around the body. It was recent, though; not enough for him to have been hanging there for more than a few minutes. A long, wide smear leading a couple of meters away, where rough, random splatters indicated where the biting and chewing had happened. No narrow sprays indicating knife cuts; had the chest wounds been inflicted afterward? There was a wide spray just beyond, consistent with an exit wound from a kinetic weapon, frangible anti-personnel ammunition most likely. Disler had been shot, the killer had chewed and torn the flesh around his face and neck, then dragged him over here and strung him up, before cutting his chest open.

Garrus' eyes tracked up over the human's body. The belt on his pants had been removed, tied around the ankles and looped over the pipe. It was a very fast, very rough job. But it was very clear that the killer wanted the victim to be seen. A display.

But he died so quickly, Garrus reasoned. A killer wanting to display his victim would take longer to-

He froze, and messaged Alison as she was still sweeping the room.

_Disler's corpse is a distraction._

She halted mid-step, right before a blurring form erupted from behind one of the machines, covered in Disler's blood and swinging a heavy metal pipe at the side of her head.

She was already moving as Garrus snapped his rifle up to fire. Her left hand rose as she spun, and red-gold light sprayed outward from her forearm, shaping into a concave shield half a meter across. The hardened kinetic barrier lacked the versatility of normal shields,but it stopped the pipe cold, the metal bending under the impact. Alison was sent stumbling back a couple of steps.

Edgar Chen - it was definitely him, recognizable even with blood covering two-thirds of his face - dropped the pipe as he chased after her, pistol in his other hand and leveled at her head, no longer protected by her shield. Garrus heard the charging of a weapon even as he pulled the trigger.

Alison's fusion rifle erupted in a torrent of blue-white fury, the plasma hitting Chen in the gut at the same time as Garrus' shot struck him in the back of the head. Chen's body spun, stomach vaporizing in a blast of horrifically seared flesh, and blood flying from the back of his head.

And then he bolted toward Alison, smashing down with the butt of his pistol, glowing metal visible in his abdomen where the fusion rifle had burned away skin. Metal also gleamed in the back of his head where Garrus had shot him.

Another human aug. Great.

The butt of the pistol smashed down into Alison's rifle, denting the casing and knocking the weapon down before the could fire it again. She twisted, shifting her center of gravity, and her shield blurred upward into Chen's throat. The kinetic barrier didn't have any mass of its own, but the edge still carried the force of her blow into his neck. Flesh parted, and the augmented human's body went stumbling backward and blood flew from his throat.

Garrus shot him again in the back, this time with armor-piercing ammunition. Blood erupted from Chen's upper chest, followed by something paler and clear, and he stumbled again, nearly falling to his knees. Alison bolted toward him, dropping the damaged fusion rifle while red light shaped over her right arm into an omniblade.

Chen abruptly leapt straight up, letting out a ragged cry of pain and anger that sounded nothing like a human. As he moved, Garrus could see that his stomach was gone, leaving blackened flesh around augmented artificial muscle and spine, both of which were burned and glowing yellow-white from the fusion rifle's blast.

The augmented human reached a pipe cluster overhead in the darkness, and Garrus shot him in the lower back as he clambered up. Chen grunted, sparks flying and a chunk of metal exploding out of his front, and then kicked off, leaping half a dozen meters across the room to another group of pipes.

Garrus put a round through his eye in mid-leap.

More sparks, more blood, and more screams. Chen hit the top of the pipes, clambering with graceless speed, arms and legs a vicious, desperate blur. Garrus spotted a ventilation grating along the wall a heartbeat before Chen reached up and tore the cover free with his bare hands. The Exo fired again, a fifth booming shot that hit Chen in the leg as he bolted through the grating, leaving a trail of blood and transparent conductive fluid.

"Damn human augs," the turian muttered, covering the vent with his rifle. At least this one hadn't killed him.

_Alison?_ he messaged.

_I'm okay,_ she replied_. Gun's wrecked.. Didn't expect him to be synthetic aug'd. That was military-grade. Haven't seen anything short of a Replica Heavy take that kind of abuse._

_Vahlenite chassis,_ Garrus sent. _Only way he survived a point-blank fusion rifle blast._

_Yeah. Hold on a sec._ He spared a glance, keeping his scope locked on the vent, to see her rummaging through something made of burnt synthetic cloth on the floor. Not Disler's clothes, but part of Chen's dockworker uniform. After a moment, she stood, holding something small, about the size of a grape. It had a hardened casing blackened by the close brush of her fusion rifle.

_Disler's cortical stack_, Garrus suggested, and she nodded. He glanced back toward the grisly scene, and then toward the door.

_We won't catch him in the city's ventilation systems,_ he sent, and she replied in a wordless affirmative.

_Xin Hengsha police are going to come down like wildfire in a few minutes,_ she replied, grabbing her weapon and stowing it._ Weapon discharge sensors. Clear out. We'll analyze later and pick up his trail, if he survives that kind of abuse._

He sent and affirmative, and the pair hurried out of the room, navigating through the maze of access passages and corridors to get clear of the site before the police locked it down. Within less than a couple of minutes, they were clear of the processing plant; less than two minutes afterward they were back in civilian clothes and were ghosts once more.

* * *

Strike Four and _Market Garden_ exited faster-than-light over Proteus, the former an assembly of dozens of warships including five light carriers and a dreadnought-sized heavy carrier, the _XCS Honjo Masamune._ They entered orbit, sliding in position so that when the PPA taskforce transitioned in a few minutes later, XCOM stood between them and the SDC blockade, a force of close to seventy lighter ships - mostly frigates and light cruisers - supported by a pair of heavy SDC carriers and nine heavy cruisers.

If it came to blows, the carriers would likely jump out to the edge of the system and deploy waves of drones and fighters while the warships held the orbital space itself. The skies over Proteus would be busy.

The standard challenges and acknowledgements were sent between all sides, followed by the standard canned accusations and veiled threats whenever an international incident was brewing. Shepard waited impatiently through it all before the SDC finally sent an acknowledgement to XCOM's fleet that their investigators were cleared for entry. Technically, XCOM could have just sent their teams down without waiting for clearance - they had the authority coupled with SDC requests for assistance - but technical authority didn't defend against actual laser beams or fusion lances fired by some jumpy commander.

Shepard's team, consisting of himself, Garm, Vega, Alma, and Sergeant McTavish' tactical squad, loaded onto their Voidranger and descended through the SDC blockade. They all wore tactical armor, save Shepard and Alma, who wore their uniform psi-cloaks over their personal armor, and Garm, who wore a set of lightweight current-gen Ghost armor which looked more like a full-body black turtleneck with ballistic weave and vahlenite plating underneath the cloth. The thick "neck" portion of the armor concealed a fast-deploy helmet, although Shepard knew he hated wearing it because it bothered his whiskers and pressed in on his ears.

The humans sat in their crash chairs, strapped in, while Vega lay on the floor in the middle of the dropship, strapped down like a pallet of cargo. Garm was secured in his own chair with multiple straps, ears tucked back and tail poking out nearly straight beneath his body.

"The kitten hates zero-g," McTavish said at Alma's curious expression. "Either he stays strapped in during the transition from ship to surface, or he goes nutters bouncing around."

"I thought cats would be at home in a low-gravity environment," she asked.

"Low gravity: yes," Garm yowled. "Zero gravity: _Fuck. That. Noise._ These damn power-saving measures are total bullshit."

"We'll be through the blockade in a few minutes," Shepard said, reviewing data feeds from the Masamune's intelligence and liaison teams. "Make sure your translators are updated, we'll be hitting Xin Hengsha's main surface port."

A quick chorus of affirmatives or annoyed curses followed, the latter accompanied by quick patches.

The minutes passed, and the pilot announced entry. The Voidranger began to vibrate as it passed through the atmosphere, hull heating up, and Garm relaxed as gravity began to reassert itself.

"Keep seated and watch your heads," Shepard called over the shaking noise of the dropship's passage. "There's a storm right over Xin Hengsha's main port."

Everyone braced themselves, the Voidranger shifting back and forth. The vibrations intensified, and a hiss of pouring rain ran through the dropship. Twice the Voidranger's direction shifted abruptly as winds struck it, followed by yowls and mutterings of anxiety. Hostile landings were never fun, whether it was under enemy fire or unpleasant weather, but Shepard was comforted by the fact that they'd be able to at least breathe if they crashed on this planet - though floating was a more serious issue.

The shaking from the storm subsided after several minutes, and the Voidranger began to descend, though rain continued to wash over the dropship. Checking the outside feeds showed a dark gray expanse overhead, blurred by a constant downpour, with a choppy gray blanket below them, save for a metallic dome emerging from the ocean's surface. As the Voidranger dropped toward it, a circular hole irised open, wide enough to accommodate a cruiser-sized bulk freighter, and the XCOM dropship descended into the cavernous bay.

"Hell of a setup they got," Vega commented as they dropped into the submarine docking facility. A series of circular platforms ran the edge of the enormous chamber, with docking spars and cradles reaching out to accommodate dozens of freighters and smaller ships, many at about one to two hundred meters in length but easily held in the enormous cradles. The entire dome was at least four kilometers across at the lowest level, which was itself about the same length from the entry gateway at the top of the bay. A guidance drone rose up to meet the Voidranger, leading it down through the rings of docked ships. Small cargo carriers and drone buzzed about the rings, either running maintenance on the freighter fleet or hauling materials between ships and loading platforms.

"Standard hanar design," Alma said, her eyes marked by that distracted look of someone checking local databases. "Looks like the contracted a lot of hanar corporations for underwater construction. Makes sense. Second highest local population is hanar, followed by asari and drell."

"I'm going to be so damn hungry down there," Vega whined as the Voidranger came in to dock. "Squid everywhere."

"Same," Garm added as he unstrapped himself.

"Gotta have some killer seafood, though," Vega said. "Major, we gonna book some nice restaurants before we leave this world."

"I'll consider it," Shepard replied. "Make the trip worthwhile." Beyond, well, averting an interstellar cold war from going hot.

A couple of minutes and quick internal decontamination sweep later, and the entry ramp slid open. The ten XCOM agents started down the ramp onto a wide landing platform that dwarfed the Voidranger. Dockworkers in blue and yellow coveralls, some with power assist frames or mechanical augs, were bustling back and forth with crates or cargo platforms. Drones zipped overhead by the dozens, cylindrical machines a couple of meters in length with spindly arms that grasped cargo and lifted it into the chaos overhead or below.

The only person not carrying or coordinating the activity stood a few meters from the Voidranger's ramp, a tall, slim, young-looking man in the dark blue and gray uniform of Xin Hengsha's police. His hands - the only part of his arms visible beneath his coat's sleeves - were gunmetal augmentations, and his eyes were hidden behind a wraparound visor of the same color, wires connecting to ports in his temples. His skin was pale - his current body was likely derived from Asian genetic stock - and his short hair dark, mostly hidden under a beret. He wore a pistol on his hip but had no other visible weaponry.

"Major Shepard?" he asked, stepping forward and extending a hand. Shepard took it, and found a hard, unyielding grip. The officer's face was locked in a dour, professional frown, and it matched his tone. "Lieutenant Victor Han, Xin Hengsha Internal Security. I have been assigned as your team's liaison for this investigation."

"Thank you, Lieutenant," Shepard replied, and turned to introduce his . "This is my team: Lieutenant Garm, my partner. Lieutenant Alma Wade, special PsiCorps attachment. Her bodyguard, Lieutenant James Vega." He pointed further back. "Sergeant McTavish, leader of my tactical team."

"You have a bear, I see," Han said, his frown expanding by a couple of millimeters. He clearly disliked having ten heavily-armed people who he didn't have full authority over on his pressurized, submerged city. "If you will come with me, I can take you to accommodations."

"We need to meet with the head of your current investigation team," Shepard said as he followed the dour-face policeman across the platform. A heavy cargo platform was descending at the far end of the platform, nearly a dozen dockworkers stepping off and carrying fueling equipment for the Voidranger.

"Yes, sir," Han replied, unenthusiastic. "I will set up a meeting as soon as possible."

"The faster you get this done, the faster we can complete the investigation and be gone," Shepard offered, and Han nodded. His frown faded slightly, but he kept walking without directly looking at them. The dockworkers passed around the XCOM personnel, one shouting to bring a set of fuel cells off the platform. "How much do you know about why we're here?"

"I am cleared," Han replied. "I would not be a useful liaison if I were not."

"Then you know the stakes here," Shepard insisted, and glanced back to his team and the dockworkers walking past. He was about to continue when he noticed something.

Alma had her head cocked to the side, eyebrows knitted, glowing eyes distant and distracted.

_Lieutenant?_ he messaged her, and her eyes snapped back toward him.

_They're screaming,_ she replied. _The workers are screaming for help._

Shepard's blood went cold, and his hand went for his sidearm.

He saw the workers behind them, surrounding the XCOM team, and one of them was reaching for something inside his coat. The handle of a weapon became visible.

_Hostiles!_ he messaged the team right as one of the workers spun, face twisting in sudden fury and determination, and he drew a high-frequency knife from his belt pouch and lunged toward one of the tactical troopers. The man whirled, right as the blade plunged into his stomach, the weapon screaming as it ripped into the vahlenite plating in a shower of sparks.

Shepard channeled psionic power through his body, and the world around him _slowed_. He could see everything in precise, slow-motion detail, swift and frantic movement becoming almost comical flailing, with everyone moving through thickened gel. The panels around his head slid into place with a drawn-out series of clicks as his helmet deployed, each part sliding out and locking together. When the visor finished moving into place there was an agonizing moment of pitch-black darkness before his HUD activated, the external microcameras lighting up and painting the inside of his helmet with a high-resolution holographic display of his surroundings.

He counted eleven dock workers turning to attack the XCOM team, seven carrying pistols and four with melee weapons: two armed high-frequency knives and the others deploying omniblades. Most were behind the tactical team, but four of them - one with an omniblade, another a knife, and the last two drawing kinetic pistols - were close to Shepard's squad.

And all of them were going straight for Alma, whose face was twisted in a mixture of surprise and horror, though she wasn't even looking at their attackers.

_Puppet socks,_ she messaged, the data reaching Shepard instantly in spite of his sped-up perceptions.

_Non-lethal if possible!_ Shepard ordered even as he leapt toward one of the blade-wielders.

If these men were fitted with puppet sock implants, it meant they not in control of their own bodies - and their own lack of control was the source of Alma's "screaming." His legs rose as he reached the closest puppet, and his feet pumped in a flying double-kick that hammered the man in the chest and forehead. The blows lifted the worker up and launched him backward into a spinning, slow-motion tumble, and Shepard landed in a crouch as the man fell.

He spun toward Alma in slow motion, pistol rising, and saw her arms spreading outward, purple light erupting around her in a circle. Shepard could see the psionic power expanding and shaping into flat planes, and then abruptly snapping into a three-meter wide dome of transparent, shimmering purple light, a heartbeat before two pistols fired and kinetic rounds exploded against the barrier.

The second blade-wielding worker rushed into the barrier, slowing as he struck it and pushing into it. It functioned like an element zero-generated kinetic barrier: fast-moving objects were repelled, but slower and larger ones could move through it. The worker managed to get halfway through the barrier before a massive arm clamped over his shoulder, and James Vega casually yanked the worker free. The man spun, swinging his blade at the bear, but his other arm shot forward, catching the man's wrist and snapping it with a twist, the sound sickening and drawn-out in the slow-motion reality Shepard was experiencing. The blade fell free, and Vega slugged him lightly in the face, sending him toppling to the floor.

One of the pistol-carrying puppets was turning to shoot Vega. Shepard prioritized him, rushing toward the puppet while he still had enough focus to maintain his speed. His left hand dropped to his belt and drew an arc thrower, and he snapped it up and fired it into the man's back. White lightning slashed and played over the man's body, and he jerked violently, screaming with involuntary spasms.

But he didn't go down, not until Shepard body-checked him, looped an arm around the worker's waist, and spun, hip-tossing him into the deck. A second blast with the arc thrower left him a twitching, unconscious heap.

Shepard looked up, pain flaring in his temples as the power flowing through him took its toll. He released the power before it got too intense, and time reverted to normal. Sound sped back up, snapping to normal speeds, and he heard a man's jabbering scream, accompanied by a sizzle of electricity. The fourth worker attacking Alma went down in a heap, and Garm hopped on top of the body in a low crouch, clutching his own arc thrower.

Shepard turned toward the rest of his team, in time to see the last dockworker collapse in a burst of electricity. One of McTavish's soldiers was down and bleeding badly even through his armor, and another was clutching a serious wound in his flank, but none were lethally injured. Puppeted dockworkers littered the pavement around them, arms and legs broken or collapsed in arc-thrower-induced heaps. Lightly augmented civilians against armored and augmented XCOM troopers was a terribly unfair matchup.

Lieutenant Han was staring at them, his frown replaced by a slightly opened mouth, a sidearm in hand and confusion in the features that were visible. He might have been a cop, but he'd likely never seen an XCOM team in action; the entire confrontation had ended in a couple of seconds.

"Backup!" Shepard barked at the man, and the policeman nodded, snapping out of his shock. Shepard checked his team as Han called for assistance, and saw that McTavish had ordered the unwounded troopers into a defensive perimeter.

Within her barrier, Alma had fallen to her knees, clutching the sides of her head and panting. Shepard pushed against it and stepped inside.

"Wade, are you hurt?" he asked, and she shook her head.

"Still screaming. Origin. Transmission through the puppets." She looked up, shivering,and abruptly a set of distant contacts on his AR display were highlighted: a group of workers a level above and about a hundred meters away, their mesh implants clearly identified as they automatically communicated with the spimes and nodes surrounding them. Four people, three marked orange and one a bright red.

"The red one is controlling them," she hissed.

_Garm, with me,_ Shepard sent, bouncing that information to his team._ Vega, McTavish, stay with Wade!_

Then he sped himself up again, _slowing_ the world around him, and bolted toward the distant targets.

They were up on the next cargo level, halfway between this one and the next docking port, putting them about fifty meters overhead and another seventy away laterally. The puppet-master and his hapless minions were standing on a balcony-like ring that extended about thirty meters into the bay from the dome's wall, where cargo was collected for transport or sorting. It was a good spot to observe the ambush from, and no doubt they had also seen its spectacular failure and the pair of Sentinels rushing toward them.

If Shepard had an Archangel pack - or better, a fully-equipped set of Zephyr armor - he could have simply flown straight up toward the puppet-master. But he only wore lower-profile powered armor, which meant he would have to rely on lower-tech tricks and his own psionics.

He poured power through his body as he ran, watching for the wide-bellied automated cargo haulers moving back and forth overhead, oblivious to the brief burst of violence below. Shepard saw his opportunity, and lifted his arm, activating the standard-issue grappling hook hidden within the armor. It was a miniaturized version of the ones carried by recon and tactical armor variants, with a shorter range, but it came in handy for Sentinels. The gauntlet's top panel folded back, exposing the launcher tube, and it fired the small clawed plug.

It slammed into one of the overhead haulers, an element zero core powering and creating a mass effect field that let the claw adhere to the target. Shepard retracted himself up the short line toward the hauler, and as he reached the airborne machine, he sent another surge of power through his body and hauled himself up onto the hauler's side while recovering his grapple. The machine was little more than a platform with thrusters and an element zero core, directed by a simple VI program and carrying strapped-down pallets of cargo, so he was easily able to climb over the boxes to get a clear shot at the platforms overhead. The quartet of workers that Alma had marked were already turning to run, and he quickly lined up his grappling claw and fired again, yanking himself toward the next level.

He coiled his legs underneath his body, twisting toward the platform, and his boots hit just below the safety railing, free hand grabbing hold. Another surge of power, and he flipped up and over the railing, landing in a crouch, drawing his sidearm, the tails of his coat pooling around him.

Garm, naturally, had managed to beat him there, crouching a few meters away with a compact plasma pistol in hand, ears pulled back. The platform was littered with boxes, enormous shipping containers, and several parked haulers, their cargo left unattended as workers scattered from the gunfire below.

_What kept you?_ the cat asked, as they both bolted toward the retreating workers.

Shepard didn't answer, because the orange-marked puppets were lifting short-barrelled, matte gray carbines with glowing green lines, and pointing them at the pair of Sentinels.

They broke in opposite directions, Shepard pouring more energy through his body, Garm using his size and agility. Plasma sizzled toward them in narrow, roiling green beams, sickly light bathing the platform and burning into pavement and cargo pallets.

_Non-lethal!_ Shepard messaged, switching his sidearm to low-power and narrow-beam modes.

_You're damn well joking,_ Garm sent back, but it was tinged with as much amusement as annoyance, and he weaved between the boxes and crates as the puppets sprayed plasma indiscriminately toward the pair. They used their armors' tactical network and sensors to map out the mess of crates and containers and track the puppets, who were backing away and sweeping plasma fire back and forth while their controller ran for a cargo hauler.

_No joke,_ Shepard replied. _No guarantee they'll have stacks if someone's puppeting them. XCOM will foot their medical bills._

Shepard emerged from behind a crate to the left of one of the puppets, omnitool assembling a stun grenade and plasma pistol in hand. He fired the grenade as he rounded the container, helmet automatically compensating as the stunner blew up in the puppet's face. He screamed, the tail-end of the cry coming in through Shepard's audio sensors, the man clutching his eyes and stumbling backward.

Shepard _slowed_, lined up his targets, and fired two quick pairs of shots. Green beams burned through the puppet's kneecaps and elbows, turning them to charred flesh and bone. He toppled, crying out in started agony, his arms and legs abruptly useless. Shepard moved past the thrashing puppet, zapping him with his arc thrower. The man would live, with his wounds being cauterized by the plasma.

The Sentinel looked back up, and his overlays showed the marked puppet-master about twenty meters away, reaching the cargo hauler and waving an arm toward the controls.

_He's escaping!_ Shepard messaged, pouring more power into his body and ignoring the intensifying headache. He leapt up atop one of the containers in a psionic-fueled jump, grappling hook deploying again. He heard another puppet cry in pain over a burst of electricity.

_Get him,_ Garm sent back._ I'll take this last one and cover you!_

The hauler started lifting off, and Shepard launched. His grapple hit the vehicle's railing and locked in, and the Sentinel retracted, flying up toward it. He hit the side of the hauler and kicked up over the railing, plasma pistol raised and tracking.

The puppet-master was a completely ordinary-looking human: average-length brown hair, plain features, medium build and height, brown stubble, unmarked dockworker blues. The man was so unremarkable that Shepard wouldn't have been able to spot him in a crowd without assistance from a psychic or computer.

The blurring speed at which he crossed the ten-meter wide hauler platform and drove a fist into Shepard's helmet was _quite_ remarkable, however.

Shepard saw it coming, an instant before his knuckles impacted the helmet, and the Sentinel poured power into his body, _slowing_ everything and letting him twist aside and spin with the blow. A ringing impact of augmented bone and flesh struck the edge of Shepard's helm, and he stumbled backward, gritting his teeth through the pain lancing through his temples.

The puppet-master whirled, and Shepard saw a flicker of purple light around the man's shoulders and eyes as he lashed out again, a vicious sidekick that hit the Sentinel's gun hand right as he fired. Plasma exploded against the puppet-master's boot, incinerating the shoe, his lower pants leg, and the foot underneath.

The blow still hit hard enough to send a numbing spasm up Shepard's arm even through his armor, and knocked the pistol loose. The puppet-master lunged at Shepard, hands wrapping around his neck and shoving him back against the railing. The metallic skeleton of a foot, smoking and twisted from the plasma blast, extended from the ruins of the man's leg.

_Internal psionic!_ Shepard messaged, grunting and grabbing the puppet-master's arms at the wrists._ Heavily aug'd!_

_Give me a couple of seconds!_ Garm replied.

The puppet-master's fingers were inhumanly strong, but Shepard's armor was designed with that in mind. The artificial muscle beneath the armored fabric stiffened in response, keeping the man's fingers from crushing Shepard's windpipe. He forced more power through his body, the pain cutting through his temples, gripped the puppet-master's wrists, and then twisted and wrenched as hard as he could.

Something important snapped under his grip, and the pressure on his neck lessened. He threw his arms out, doing the same to the puppet-master' s hands, and brought his right arm back down to his side, balling it into a fist. He stepped forward, driving his hand up into his foe's chest with sufficient speed to trigger kinetic barriers.

A blue-tinged mass effect field rippled into existence around Shepard's forearm, while a more solid, concave barrier formed over his fingers and knuckles. As an Internal who could enhance his speed, Shepard could strike so swiftly that even with armor and his own powers strengthening his body, he ran the risk of breaking his own arms when he punched at full power. His omnitool and suit's mass effect projectors were modified to assist in that regard: the gauntlets formed a dual-layer kinetic barrier, with the outer barrier protecting his hand from the impact, and the inner barrier providing a cushioning layer to absorb the force from the blow.

Something within the puppet-master's torso gave way before Shepard's shimmering blue uppercut, and the man was hurled backward among an expanding blue cloud as the barriers collapsed. He slammed into the railing on the opposite side of the platform, a screech of bent metal accompanying the collision.

Shepard exhaled, and crouched, picking up his pistol from where it had fallen. He glanced to the side, over the railing, and saw that the hauler was still rising, about twenty meters up and climbing. He quickly found the remote controls for the hauler with a short range scan, and reversed the orders to send it back toward the floor below.

_Fistfight on a flying platform? Feel's like my life's a bad action movie,_ Shepard thought, turning toward the puppet-master, who was pushing himself up to his feet. Blood soaked the front of his overalls, and Shepard could see rips and bloody fabric sticking to the point in his chest where he'd been punched. He must have ruptured something important.

"Stay down," Shepard ordered, pointing his pistol at the augmented human. "This will only get-"

The puppet-master bolted toward him, an ungainly blur of bloody flesh and mechanical augs, and Shepard _slowed_ again, ignoring the spikes of pain driving into his skull. He switched to maximum power as the blurring cyborg became merely stupidly fast, and squeezed the trigger. A roiling column of plasma as thick as Shepard's arm lashed out, burning into the cyborg's center of mass, searing flesh and burning away his clothes.

He barely reacted, charging straight through the plasma and slamming into Shepard with his shoulder leading. The crash of augmented flesh and armor sent them both hurtling toward the railing.

"Shepard, I'm here!" Garm shouted as his grappling hook carried him toward the hauler. He clambered up onto the platform, pistol in hand, right as the Sentinel and puppet-master went over the side past him.

"Oh. Well, _balls_."

For a heartstopping moment, Shepard and his opponent hung in the air, dropping toward the cargo level below. Then the Sentinel snapped his left arm up and fired his grappling hook again, striking the underside of the hauler and yanking himself away from the falling aug. A moment later, the puppet-master hit the deck below with a crash and a faint splurch of crushed meat.

Hanging from the underside of the platform, Shepard leveled his weapon at the augmented human below, who was pushing himself to his feet, a mess of burnt flesh and exposed cybernetic parts.

_Garm, nonlethal,_ Shepard ordered.

_I'll get the arms,_ Garm replied, and both Sentinels opened fire, shooting the puppet-master in the knees, elbows, and shoulders. Narrow plasma beams cut into the cyborg, piercing and melting joints, and a couple of seconds and nine shots later, he was flopping on the deck. By that time, the hauler was low enough that Shepard could safely release his grapple and drop to the floor.

"McTavish," he spoke into his radio as he and Garm strode toward the twitching body. "All clear down there?"

"Yeah, we've got a perimeter, wounded are stabilized, sir," came the reply. "Lieutenant Wade's stable, too."

"Good," Shepard said as they reached the cyborg. "Lieutenant Han? I need these docks locked the fuck down."

"I will do so," the policeman replied quickly, and Shepard could hear how out of his depth the man was in his voice.

The cyborg was still trying to move, and had managed to roll onto his back. He was glaring blades at the two Sentinels looming over him even while slowly flopping away from them on nonfunctional limbs, molten and twisted metal poking out from the ruined ends. His flesh was mostly blackened or burned clear off, but his eyes were still intact and gleamed with a vicious intellect.

Shepard pointed his pistol at the cyborg and fired, drilling a beam straight through the torso. All movement ceased instantly, and the body fell to the deck, life fading from his eyes.

"I thought we were doing nonlethal," Garm mused.

"Something like this thing?" Shepard replied, shaking his head. "This is nonlethal."

Shepard crouched over the body, reopening his channel to McTavish.

"McTavish, get a containment unit here from the Masamune," he said, setting his plasma pistol to low yield, and jammed it into the puppet-master's neck. "Full sweep team. And I need a cranial freezer, off the Voidranger," he added.

"For what?" McTavish asked, and Shepard pulled the trigger three times, drawing the pistol across the body's neck. He planted a foor on the cyborg's chest pulled hard, grunting with the effort, and the puppet-master's ruined head came free.

"I've got a brain I need Lieutenant Wade to examine," he muttered.

* * *

**_Author's Notes: _**Fusion rifles are a piece of tech from Destiny. Puppet socks are Eclipse Phase technology, and a particularly nasty one at that. Relevant information is available in the Codex.


	10. Eight: NEPTUNE DAGGER Part One

**Broker File BA-00299814-4113-AL**

**Recording: Drone download of recording from Hoplite Security LLC Contractor "Alison Young" and Garrus Vakarian**

**Recording occurred after simulspace interview with Armacham Technology Corporation Vice President Marshal Dishler's ego from recovered cortical stack after his murder by "Edgar Chen" (see attached files on contacts, aliases, psionic screening on "Metzirov")**

**Begin recording:**

**Alison Young:** Holy shit you colossal _fucking_ morons.

**End Recording**

* * *

_**Chapter Eight: Operation: Neptune Dagger**_

"I was killed again, wasn't I?"

Marshal Disler wore the same suit he'd been wearing right before he had been shot. A quick check of his body showed that it pretty solidly matched his build and outfit from when he'd been abducted, dragged into the bowels of the shithole colony whose projects he'd been put in charge of, and then shot in the back. The room was a pure white cube or sphere - hard to tell because it was impossible to make out where the walls were - with a simple black metal table in the center, and two black metal chairs for Disler and the woman to sit at.

The woman was made of solid black, reflective metal. The avatar was vaguely feminine, but utterly featureless - a womanly shape but no clothing or hair or anything visible beyond mirror-smooth blackness. At least she had a pleasant voice. Cold, but pleasant.

So, the usual debriefing setup.

"Yes, you were, Mister Disler," the woman replied. "You were killed by this man." She waved a metal hand, and a picture of the body that his killer had been wearing appeared: a dockworker with a generic Asian gene stock.

"His name is Edgar Chen," she continued.

"The name of the poor bastard he killed, you mean," Disler replied. The woman did not reply directly, instead continuing to talk.

"Unfortunately, our cleanup team was unable to rescue you before he killed you. We were able to injure him and recover your cortical stack, although your body had been severely damaged. We'll have to get you sleeved into a new one, but before we can do that I need to debrief you on the entire incident."

"Of course you do," Disler said, sighing. He idly reached out with his senses across the simulspace environment, pushing against it to see how much he could read from it, but it was closed off entirely. He knew that he was unlikely to change that even with his rank and power; Armacham's cleanup units were very strict and had their own chain of command.

Of course, that was assuming that this really was an ATC debriefing. He could be talking to the very person who killed him right now, trying to glean more information out of him. Though…. there were more direct ways of getting that knowledge, assuming the psychic was willing to get messy. The idea set his virtual stomach turning.

"So, how do you want to handle this?" Disler asked, testing them. "Should I walk us through the entire process of what happened? Or just what happened to me after the Synchronicity Event?"

"Our concern is cleanup," the woman said. "How many escaped the site, and who let them loose?"

"All three intact Commanders managed to escape," Disler said, leaning back, satisfied with that response. Cleanup really only had one job, and stayed focused on that. One of the escapees would have been asking more probing questions, trying to find out where the other projects were or digging for corporate knowledge.

"Fortunately, going by the reports," he continued, "it looks like all their intact Replica were destroyed during the escape, so we've only got three psychics to hunt down. If SDC can keep their blockade going at any rate."

"That is good news," the debriefer said with a nod. "Who set them loose? Was it an internal uprising or an external attack?"

"Honestly, we're not sure," Disler said with a shake of his head. "But I believe it was external. Someone breached the security, did something to the Commanders, drove them insane, or at least turned them violent. And they broke free, turned their replica against the security, and ripped everything apart. Fortunately, the two Beta units were barely sane to start with. One of them must have possessed or completely sleeved into the body that attacked me. The other one shouldn't be difficult to find."

Disler sighed, shaking his head.

"The real danger is the Alpha. Paxton Fettel. If we don't kill or contain him quickly, as well as whoever set him loose, the entire colony is likely to sink. Along with us."

* * *

The _XCS Honjo Masamune_ was a fully-equipped XCOM carrier, and the organization's doctrine still held to using the carriers as the long-range control and support centers of their fleets. That also meant that they continued to maintain the numerous support facilities an XCOM fleet demanded, which included containment and interrogation chambers.

Interrogating a disconnected brain - at least in an XCOM ship - was a rarity, but it wasn't unheard of. This one was protected by the standard cyborg armored shell and an internal unit that encased and maintained the brain, resembling a white eggshell with a "tail" section for the brain stem and a synthetic spinal column. The Intelligence team had already hooked the brain up to a set of standard life support tanks and direct-access feeds to its sensory input plugs once they're managed to extract it from the head Shepard had severed.

"Are you ready for this, Lieutenant?" Shepard asked as they stood on the observation deck, safely removed from the interrogation chamber, and watched the Intelligence team prepare to start the interrogation. The whole of his unit was present: Garm, Vega,, and Wade. The cat was lounging in an unoccupied chair, watching them with a lazy, anticipatory eye, while the bear loomed behind Alma, not quite making physical contact. Alma herself was staring at the case containing the puppet-master's organic brain.

"Yes, Major, I am," she said with a nod, glowing eyes locked on the brain.

"You went catatonic down there," Shepard said, and she nodded.

"It comes with the territory, sir," she replied. "I am a high-rated Empath. But I'm no wilting flower, sir." That last part was delivered with a firm conviction. "I was able to defend myself."

"Good," Shepard replied, satisfied by that answer. Conventional psionic combat doctrine held to protect Empaths, but he reminded himself that for all of her sensitivity, Alma had kept enough presence of mind to a crucial asset when thing turned bloody.

"Besides, reading a brain in a controlled environment is far different from being surrounded by thousands of minds at once, several of them screaming for help," she added. She turned and found a chair, and settled down into it, closing her eyes. She inhaled, held it for a few moments, and exhaled. "Let's get started."

_Our Empath is ready, Captain,_ Shepard messaged. Begin.

The popular perception of XCOM was that they resorted to torture and coercion first when dealing with alien prisoners, popularized by endless movies and serials about their exploits after the Ethereal War. The reality was that XCOM attempted to use more effective and proven methods that were far less horrific, but the Ethereals' minions had such a literally alien mindset that those techniques were completely ineffective. XCOM's interrogators had then resorted to invasive surgeries and neural stimulation, along with even more destructive methods, simply to get viable information from them.

By comparison, the interrogation of this brain was straightforward. It was a normal human brain, as far as those went, so when it was awakened it was fed neural stimuli approximating a false environment. The interrogators would then begin interacting with the captive brain. It wasn't too different from questioning a saved brain-state on a cortical stack in a simulspace environment, although it required quite a bit more equipment and care to keep the brain alive.

The process started out normally: the interrogation team asked the usual set of questions, while biomonitors read the physical and chemical reactions from the prisoner's responses, and Alma observed emotional patterns and psionic readings. The prisoner refused to respond to any questions, obviously, and after a few minutes Shepard started pacing from boredom. If he had a choice he wouldn't be here to begin with, as interrogation was not a pleasant experience for anyone. Everything interesting could be summed up in a report, and the entire procedure was either boring questions or stomach-churning nightmare fuel. But a Sentinel or approved Intelligence officer had to be present for official XCOM interrogations, both to monitor the assigned Empath and observe the procedures, and Alma was his responsibility.

After the first ten minutes of the one-sided conversation, Garm had curled up and fallen asleep, Vega was lounging on the floor next to Alma, and Shepard glanced to the Empath as she sat, eyes closed. He noticed her sitting ramrod straight, gloved hands clenched.

"Lieutenant?" he asked. She exhaled, and shook her head.

_Shhh. Sir._

He went silent, and resumed his pacing. He checked with his muse for updates from the ground teams, and found a message from Captain Anderson: apparently the attack on Shepard's team had prompted an upgrade to the investigation, turning it into a full-on XCOM mission, codenamed Operation NEPTUNE DAGGER. Several platoons of XCOM troopers, plus several dozen Intelligence agents, were being deployed to the Xin Hengsha colony to assist in the investigation, and predictably the local government was throwing an obstructionist fit over it.

Shepard kept pacing, and checked on Alma every few minutes. As the interrogation proceeded in its steady, plodding way, she became gradually more and more distressed, sitting up straighter, lips pressed together more tightly, and hands clenching. At about thirty minutes into the session, she abruptly pulled one hand free and held it down at her side. Vega immediately shuffled over, letting her put her hand on his massive head, and she relaxed after a few moments.

Forty-five minutes into the thoroughly unresponsive questioning, she opened her eyes.

_Can we halt the session please?_ she messaged, and the interrogators immediately ceased. Alma slowly rose to her feet, shaking her head and massaging the sides of her temples.

"What did you get from it?" Shepard asked, concern creeping into his voice.

"Its not human," she murmured.

"Come again?" Shepard said, raising an eyebrow. "We already checked its DNA."

"Yes, and biologically, it is human," she replied. "But the mind inhabiting that brain _isn't_. Its not an AI or VI either. The thought processes weren't human, or anything I could recognize."

Shepard frowned, looking back to the containment cell. There did exist specially-modified human brains that allowed nonhumans to sleeve into a human body (and vice versa), but those were relatively new and rare; most often one found those being used by the stupidly wealthy or someone who wanted to "surf" through different bodies to see how a turian or elcor lived. Trying to sleeve an ego into a brain of another species without it being modified for alien ego inhabitation tended to be… messy.

When he suggested that possibility, Alma shook her head.

"Thought processes stay generally the same, no matter the meatware used," she said, sitting back down. "It has to. If you switch brains but the architecture doesn't support your ego's processes, you get entirely new types of mental disorders. Usually coupled with lots of blood. But this."

She shivered.

"It not human, but it it's been modified to _use human neural architecture_. I've never seen or heard anything like it."

Shepard's blood ran cold at that, and he turned away for a moment, thinking. If Alma was right - and he had no reason to believe she wasn't - then they were potentially facing an unknown alien enemy, which meant a potential CASE BLOODY JESTER scenario.

"You are _absolutely_ certain that this thing isn't human, or any of our allies?" Shepard asked, and Alma nodded. "Okay, go get some food and rest."

She opened her mouth to object, but then her glowing eyes met his, and she closed her lips and nodded. She rose, and Vega hauled himself up, plodding after her. They crossed the observation deck and a few moments later passed through the doorway leading into the corridor beyond. The moment the corridor closed, Shepard turned back toward the interrogation cell.

He caught his own reflection in the armor-glass: his expression hard and cold, eyes like chiseled stone, a promise of destruction and pain lingering within them. Garm called it his "happy times face."

And lurking over his shoulder in the reflection, a wavering shadow, tall and lean, four spindly arms extending to the sides, as though preparing to embrace Shepard.

He whirled, _slowing_ the world around him, plasma pistol whipping out into his hands and helmet deploying. The pistol rose, pointing dead center at the figure's chest, and-

Nothing.

An empty observation deck, save for Garm, who was springing up into a vaulting somersault, plasma pistol and arc thrower in his hands, tail pointing straight out. Shepard swept his weapon left and right, only to find it empty and silent.

He let go of the power raging through his body, and time reverted to normal. Garm landed in silence on the deck a couple of meters from his chair, tail thrashing back and forth low to the floor.

"The Hel was that, Shep?" he yowled, sweeping the other side of the room in quick, twitchy gestures. "Frost giants?"

"No... no," Shepard replied, his heart pounding violently. He shook his head, and began collapsing his helmet and sidearm. "I thought I saw something. Maybe a hallucination."

"Psi?" Garm asked. Shepard exhaled, and then opened a link to the Masamune's bridge.

_Admiral Hackett? This is Major Shepard down in Interrogation._

_Major,_ the Admiral replied. _Go ahead. Good or bad news?_

_Had a hallucination down here, sir. No sensor returns, but our subject is psionic. Recommend a sweep and psi-alert to be on the safe side._

_Understood, Major. Haven't had our monthly drill yet, anyway. Carry on._

Shepard turned back toward the interrogation cell, calming himself by staring at the braincase in the chamber. After a few minutes, he opened a link to the interrogation team.

_This is Major Shepard,_ he sent. _Per my Sentinel authority, I am removing human-protected status from the subject. You are authorized to use all available means to interrogate it. Find out what it knows._

He settled down into the chair, clasping his hands before him, and watched in silence as the team went back to work.

* * *

Two hours into the interrogation, and Shepard had to leave, calling in one of the more cold-blooded Intelligence agents to oversee the operation - which was rapidly looking like it would become quite literally surgical. He didn't know what that brain could actually feel, nor did he want to really ever find out.

Fortunately, he had an excuse to leave the interrogation: the teams working down on Xin Hengsha had found something possibly connected to the missing psychics.

"Marshal Disler," Shepard said with a frown as he and Garm headed toward the Masamune's launch bay and their waiting Voidranger, where McTavish and the rest of his squad were standing by. The one critically-wounded soldier was still in medical, going through a healing vat treatment, but the other four were ready to go.

"Armacham VP on the colony," Captain Anderson replied. "He was found killed and partially eaten in the colony's processing plant. I don't think the timing is a coincidence."

"Definitely not," Shepard replied, and did a quick database check. "Cannibalism."

"Well, when you're desperate," Garm said with a shrug, and Shepard shook his head at the cat's low laughter.

"Some Mentals can pull fragments of stored memory and data from another human's neural network if they ingest their flesh," Shepard said, scowling. "They don't really test it very much in lab conditions, though. Data gained seems to be very fragmented, and decays rapidly upon death, so the flesh has to be raw and fresh."

"You think an SDC escapee was eating this Disler's flesh to learn his secrets?" Garm asked, and Shepard shrugged.

"Either that or we've got the freakiest case of corporate espionage I've ever seen," he replied, before switching back to Anderson. "Sir, why did the police wait so long to report this to us? Police report indicates Disler was found four hours ago. If they thought it was important enough to notify us, they would have sent it immediately."

"Obstructionist bullshit, Shepard, as usual," Anderson replied. "Xin Hengsha police are furious that we've got any presence on the on the colony."

Garm purred in amusement.

"And an XCOM task force rooting around in their dirty laundry and secret psionic labs wouldn't have anything to do with that, now would it?" he asked.

Anderson's face twisted in a scowl of his own.

"We didn't find any details about this murder until one of our own informorphs trawling the local network picked it up," he said. "We had to strongarm the police into letting us even see the report, let alone having access to the crime scene. They can't stop us from accessing the relevant data, but they can slow us down. Maybe you can talk some reason into them when you meet them face-to-face."

"We'll be down there in about twenty, sir," Shepard assured Anderson as they entered the sprawling hangar deck of the _Masamune_. "I'll sort this out, one way or another."

"Shepard, be careful here," Anderson warned. "You can't just bludgeon through bureaucracy."

"I can bludgeon pretty hard, sir," Shepard muttered.

* * *

The trip back down to Proteus was fast and once again an unpleasant experience of wracking storm fronts and pouring rain. The Voidranger settled down once more onto Xin Hengsha's docking dome only this time the dropship was directed to land higher up, at a smaller cradle which had a pair of gun turrets facing inward along the walkway leading out to the ship. The guns didn't appear to be able to actually rotate back toward the cradle, which meant they were intended to cover the retreat of someone important.

"Would have been nice to land here, instead of further down," Garm muttered as they started down the ramp.

"They we wouldn't have caught that brain," Shepard replied.

Waiting for them at the base of the ramp was Lieutenant Han, wearing the same police uniform as he had a few hours ago - only now he had augmented his sidearm with torso and leg armor and the butt of a SDC-issue fusion rifle poked over his shoulder. Flanking him were a quartet of other Xin Hengsha policemen, similarly outfitted.

"Major Shepard," Han said with a nod, his perpetual frown a few shades less intense than it had been a few hours ago. "I have transportation prepared. If you'll come with me?"

"Of course. I appreciate the escort," Shepard replied, and they started down the walkway together, the police escort moving ahead of them. "Do we know anything new about the murder?"

"Forensics are still processing the site," Han said. "The plant has been locked down. We believe the killer is using an augmented body, and escaped into the ventilation systems in the processing facility."

"So he could be anywhere," Shepard muttered.

"Unlikely," Garm said, and Shepard glanced to him. "This is a young underwater colony. Many modules linked together, but its all recent construction. Its not like the Citadel, with interlocking infrastructure built up over the centuries."

"Correct," Han said with a sharp nod. "The ventilation systems within the processing plant are extensive, but they don't extend past the plant itself. If he wanted to exit the facility, he would have to take one of the personnel entryways or fluid pipelines. Those are secured."

"How did you find the murder?" Shepard asked. Han exhaled, annoyed.

"That is the strangest thing," he said, turning back toward the XCOM team. "Weapons sensors in the area picked up a number of discharges. A fusion or plasma weapon, and several kinetic shots. We responded within minutes to the location and found the body and signs of a shootout."

"Was a cortical stack recovered?" Garm asked. Han shook his head. "Maybe whoever was shooting took the stack."

"That is a possibility," Han said. "Whoever was firing the weapons managed to slip our cordon before we could lock down the entire plant. That or they've hidden well."

"So the killer could have escaped as well," Shepard said, and Han nodded, frown deepening.

"It is a possibility, but our sensors have been picking up something moving in the ventilation system periodically. We have drones sweeping the vents and locking them down. Ah, this way."

He gestured as they reached the outer ring, pointing toward a doorway marked "Marine Transportation." The group entered and started down a circular hallway of metal and armor-glass, pale blue-white lights running in strips along the top and bottom of the tube.

"What about the civilians who attacked us?" Shepard asked. He hadn't received any reports from them when he'd gotten the data dump on the Disler murder.

"All alive, and will recover, physically," Han said. "Mentally, we don't know yet. None of them had cortical stacks, but some had recent backup insurance, which will give us a timeframe to find when they were abducted and implanted with puppet socks."

He paused, and stopped, turning back to Shepard.

"My superiors… appreciate that you used nonlethal force. Eleven of those men could have been killed permanently. You averted a tragedy, Major."

"Tell them I appreciate it, Lieutenant," Shepard replied.

"Do you know anything more on the cyborg responsible for this?" Han asked, and Shepard frowned, thinking for a moment. He finally decided straight disclosure was best. Hengsha and the SDC as a whole needed to know this.

"My Empath said it wasn't human, or anything she'd seen before," he said. Han's frown twisted into surprise. "I've started aggressive interrogation. Tell your superiors to assume a CASE BLOODY JESTER until we know more."

"I… see." Han's tone was flat, but his expression showed how much that warning was disturbing him. He turned away for a moment, and then stopped as the entered another chamber.

This one was a submarine pen, short but wide, featuring half a dozen marine vessels in docking pools. The ships were long, lean, rounded craft about fifteen meters in length, all bearing the Xin Hengsha Police colors and an unobtrusive pair of tubes on their undersides. Technicians and police officers, some clad in dive suits and breathing apparatus, moved around, working on the submarines. Han led them toward one of the docked ships, a side hatch sliding open at they approached, revealing a dim interior.

"Here is our transport, Major," he said. "We use these for rapid emergency response and transport. We should be at the processing plant in minutes."

* * *

The ride was swift and smoother than Shepard expected. The police submarine slid through the water around the colony, and Shepard tapped into the exterior cameras. He got an impressive view of the colony, although it was mostly through the submarine's enhanced lighting due to the storms raging overhead. Hundreds of columns of metal arose from a continental shelf, which supported dozens of immense spheres and columns which were wreathed in countless lights. Other, darker spheres and cubes lurked among the residential modules of the city. Immense schools of fish, narrow, whip-like fish with gleaming blue and purple scales, flowed throughout the city's supporting columns, and a vast blanket of human-grown kelp covered the shelf around the base of the city, cylindrical maintenance drones moving through the forests and tending to the plants with mechanical tentacles.

As they rode in silence, Shepard pulled a data dump from the Intelligence agents checking the murder site. The forensic investigation was being conducted by Sentinel Maruq, an Intel specialist at forensics. No new updates, beyond the fact that whoever had been shooting weapons in the place spoofed the local sensors and spimes, covering their entry and exit into the plant. Some basic traces from the weapons had been recovered, indicating someone had definitely been firing a fusion rifle and armor-piercing kinetic rounds. They'd also recovered quite a bit of blood and fluids associated with synthmorph bodies, including some electro-conductive liquid normally used by the geth.

"Shep, see this," Garm muttered as they rode, sending him a database link. Shepard opened it, finding Marshal Disler's records, including background and education, with emphasis put on his particular specialties.

_Disler's a psionic biologist, not a marine engineer,_ Shepard messaged. _Not a smoking gun, but definitely a link._

"Oh, and more bad news," Garm added, and sent him an alert from Market Garden that came through while he'd been reviewing the forensics.

"Great, the Citadel's finally showed up," Shepard muttered. Likely they'd already been here, or at least an STG team had been present, but now it was official.

A single Citadel frigate had arrived in system. It was a top of the line, next-generation hybrid turian/salarian design, like a flowing, double-edged dagger, and it was descending toward Proteus without slowing. And when Shepard checked the registry and authorization codes, he understood why.

"The Citadel's sent a Spectre to investigate," Shepard said. "Saren Arterius."

"Hm. This cluster still has some room to get fucked," Garm mused.

* * *

The mixed team of XCOM and Xin Hengsha police docked at an exterior sub pen that serviced the processing plant, and they had barely started disembarking when an alert went through the local network. Han patched Shepard's team into the feed as they hurried out of the dock and through a police checkpoint manned by nervous-looking policemen in tactical armor.

"-is one's squadron is finishing the lock-down of the freshwater storage and pumping station," reported a monotonous, gender-free voice through the radio feed. "Edgar Chen will be cornered in this area of the facility."

A video feed appeared in the corner of Shepard's vision as they hurried through the corridors, a pounding avalanche of nearly a dozen armored boots. The feed was coming from a camera drone following a squad of Hengsha tactical police advancing down a brightly-lit hallway lined with haptic displays and thick pipes along the ceiling. These policemen looked far more at ease in their heavy carapace armor and helmets than the regular cops from the previous checkpoint. Floating beside the drone was a hovering purple-pink jellyfish, wreathed in a pale blue mass effect shield and flight kit, holographic Hengsha Police badges hovering on its flanks. The hanar police officer carried two laser rifles, each in a pair of tentacles, along with another pair of kinetic pistols. His ID gave his Face Name as Xelen.

"This is Major Shepard, XCOM," the Sentinel called as they hurried toward that section of the plant, Han leading the way, at least until Garm bounded ahead of him on all fours. "We are closing on your position. Secure the site for our arrival, we will enter and clear."

"This one acknowledges your authority, Major Shepard," Xelen replied. "This one's team would not contest your desire to face a lunatic cannibal cyborg in close quarters."

Shepard wasn't sure if that was a joke. Hanar humor was an acquired taste.

"We'll be at your position in seven minutes," Shepard said. On the feed, the police were checking side doors and offices, throwing sensor drone clouds into them and then locking the doors once the rooms were confirmed clear. Shepard checked over the information on their suspect: an unremarkable dockworker, much like the men who had been puppeted earlier, except the man had been found on recent security footage holding a weapon on Disler and pushing him through the processing plant's corridors shortly before the Armacham VP's death.

Shepard glanced to Han.

"What about the plant workers?" he asked.

"The majority of civilians were evacuated when the shots were first fired," Han replied. "We found a few who were essential or unable to receive the alert while sweeping the rest of the facility, and they were detained for their safety. Everyone's been accounted for."

"Have they been scanned for puppet socks?" Shepard asked, and Han nodded immediately.

"First thing we did after the attack on the docks," he replied. "All of them were clear."

An alert from Shepard's muse came through as they ran through the sprawling complex: the Spectre's ship had launched a shuttle, which was plowing through the storms surrounding the colony and headed straight for Hengsha's docks. Saren Arterius would be setting foot on the colony in a matter of minutes.

Judging by the messages whipping back and forth across the Hengsha police bands, as well as the XCOM, SDC, and PPA naval channels, Saren Arterius was one of those Spectres who solved most problems by making things a hell of a lot worse first. Shepard could understand why a Spectre would be sent to this situation: the Council had a vested interest in maintaining human stability, considering their military alliance and the mutual threat they faced. But sending Saren... Either the Council didn't have anyone else on hand to respond to the crisis, or Saren was acting on his own discretion. Spectres had a history of coming across crises, building threats, or simply bad things in general, and resolving them one way or another.

They didn't do that as often in human space, if only because Spectres didn't have the same kind of freedom to operate as they did in Citadel territory. They had to have permission to act from human governments, although most governments let them operate anyway, and simply kept a careful eye on any Spectre acting in their space, in the event one of them needed a sharp and vicious boot in the ass. No one was impeding Saren, but Shepard could guess that everyone would have eyes watching his every movement.

Maybe that would keep the turian honest.

"Major Shepard," Xelen reported after a minute, his drone showing police clustered around a heavy, sliding double door, one of the two mechanical halves partially wrenched open, the edges marked with red blood in ragged handprints. "This one's team has finished securing the entries into the freshwater storage and pumping station. This door has been damaged by blunt trauma applied to mechanisms. This one's team will hold position and await your arrival, and there he is, open fire."

At the same moment that the hanar's monotonous order came through, the feed showed a bloody arm reach through the door, and a skeletal figure of burnt meat, bloody flesh, and gleaming chrome metal hurled itself through the door at the police. Weapons snapped up, but in the half-second it took to acquire the cyborg, he'd driven an arm through one cop's throat, ripping it open in a spray of arterial blood.

Then a storm of bullets and lasers converged on the cyborg, charring flesh and bouncing off what was almost certainly a vahlenite chassis. Edgar Chen - facial recognition confirmed that much - leapt back as more than half a dozen weapons, many carried by Xelan, drilled him from several directions. He blurred several meters back toward the door, and then leapt at another policeman, smashing an arm into the man's helmet hard enough to snap his neck.

Then Chen recoiled as said arm was blasted clean off at the elbow from several direct hits at the same time, the forearm arcing through the air in a mixture of blood, electro-conductive fluid, and sparking artificial muscles, courtesy of Xelen and his many, many weapons. The cyborg leapt away, ducking and weaving and rushing toward the door.

Watching the feed, Shepard found it strangely disconcerting to hear the hanar cop calmly state that "This one finds it appropriate that your mother has sexual relations with elcor who possess unattractive pheromones." while spraying Chen's dodging, jumping form with a constant barrage of laser beams and kinetic rounds as he retreated.

The cyborg escaped into the passage beyond, but Xelan did not let up. The hanar cycled his various weapons' ammunition in a blurring whirlwind of boxes and purple tentacles, and continued shooting through the open door while the other policemen grabbed their dead and injured and pulled them clear.

"The illegitimate offspring of diseased varren and krogan fecal matter may return," Xelen monologued as he kept shooting through the door. "Prepare your weapons to reduce him to slag if he possesses insufficient intelligence or sufficient reproductive fortitude to attempt another attack."

Shepard came across the scene less than a minute later, running at a full sprint, Garm beside him and the rest of the group on his tail. Xelen and two other cops were covering the door, no longer shooting, while another was treating the man with the broken neck. He was still alive, unlike the policeman whose throat was missing.

"Garm, you're on recon!" Shepard ordered as they approached. "McTavish, take your team in, stay together. Shoot to kill, we'll rip his stack or brain as needed. Han, secure this door, let nothing past you!"

Acknowledgements came back from his team, and Shepard moved past the hanar and humans covering the door, nodding his thanks as they backed up, and moved through the ruined doorway, sidearm leading.

* * *

"Sir," McTavish said a minute later, "You sure you only want that little sidearm?"

They moved down the corridor beyond the police checkpoint, Shepard holding his plasma pistol while Garm, McTavish, and his XCOM troopers spread out behind them, weapons at the ready. The hallway was about thirty meters long and lined with heavy pipes on either side. The illumination was dimmer here, and the sickly glow from their plasma weapons cast strange shadows across the room. The humming of working machinery and running water surrounded them, and the air was humid and carried a tinge of rust and something chemical.

"I brought you guys for a reason," Shepard replied, and McTavish nodded. Between them they had a plasma marksman rifle, two plasma rifles, an alloy cannon, and a heavy plasma cannon, along with plenty of explosives and blaster launcher rounds. Anything that could fit into these corridors, they could likely kill several times over.

"Fair enough, sir," McTavish replied.

They drew close to the door at the end, and Garm moved ahead, pistol in one hand and the other hefting a stubby, box-barrelled weapon with a drum magazine, the whole thing about the length of Shepard's forearm. It was a compact canister launcher that fired… well, anything you'd prefer to enter a room first, really.

In this case, Garm had loaded the launcher with microdrone canisters, and he cloaked as he approached the door, disappearing into invisible sensor-transparency. The door opened automatically as he approached, which kind of defeated the purpose of stealth, but cloaked as he was (and much shorter than a normal human), Garm didn't present an immediate target to shoot at. He lifted the launcher, set the range with a mental command through a smartlink to the weapon, and fired a canister into the room beyond.

The shell detonated twenty meters away, spraying hundreds of thousand of microscopic, sensor-equipped drones in a swiftly expanding cloud. Data rapidly returned from the machines as they scanned the storage and pumping area beyond.

"Bollocks," McTavish muttered. "Little bastard could be anywhere in there."

The freshwater storage area was half a kilometer long and a quarter a kilometer deep and wide. A long, solid metal walkway spanned the length of the chamber, starting about eight meters from the ceiling. Workstations and consoles were spaced every hundred meters along the walkway, next to vertical pipes and machinery built into the ceiling at regular intervals. The pipes descended into gigantic vertical tanks that ran from the walkway to the floor a quarter of a kilometer below. A latticework of catwalks, ladders, and stairways ran around the many gigantic tanks, and the containers had pipes running out of them at the bottom that fed into several other enormous pipes that ran out of the room.

At least the room was brightly lit, with wide, brilliant white lamps overhead, running the length of the room and positioned along the sides and alongside the tanks. The only other way out of the room was a similar set of doors on the far side of the storage area, which Shepard's display showed was locked down with a couple of squads of Hengsha police on the other side, their data updating in real time. Chen must have tried escaping through Xelen's team when he realized he was about to be trapped in this room.

"Move in," Shepard ordered. "Garm, leave us the launcher."

Shepard crouched to pick up the weapon as it appeared on the floor, and they advanced into the storage area, Garm bounding through ahead of them. Pistol in his main hand, Shepard started firing canisters into the massive chamber as they stepped through the doorway. Each explosion launched more microdrones to scout the huge room. One canister was usually enough to scout out something the size of a small apartment building, but there simply weren't enough of the tiny machines in one shell to search out a place this large. He programmed the drones to spread out and down, so they wouldn't waste numbers scattering over the ceiling.

The team moved along the walkway, XCOM troops training their weapons forward and over the sides, helmet scanners joining the drones in the search. Aside from the hum of the machines around them and the deliberate, slow clanking of their own boots on the walkway, the cavernous room was silent. The hiss and pump of Shepard's launcher and the distant crack of detonating canisters periodically dispelled the steady silence.

"I dinnae like this, sir," McTavish whispered. "Slippery bastard can come at us from any direction."

Shepard nodded but said nothing, advancing in the tense quiet and firing another drone canister every minute or so. He kept that pulse of psionic energy close at hand, ready to react the instant Chen showed himself. The minutes passed slowly, the team steadily clearing the chamber,

Then Garm pinged a spot fifty meters ahead and forty down, past the halfway point of the room and behind one of the tanks. Shepard and two of the troopers shifted toward it, weapons covering the marker. The cat was actually crouched on the railing overlooking the target, still as a statue, his position marked on their HUDs as he was still behind his cloak.

_Garm?_ Shepard asked.

_Movement,_ the cat replied. _And I hear machinery. Cybernetics. Pumping air, pumping blood and EC fluid._

Shepard fired the launcher, arcing the canister over the top of the target. Drones spread out and down, slowly descending behind the tank, scanning the area, and highlighted Chen.

The bloody, battered cyborg - now mostly a metallic skeleton wreathed in scorched artificial muscle and blackened skin - was hanging from the one intact arm, fingers hooked through the bottom of a catwalk along one side of the tank. His spindly legs hung free, swaying slightly. He'd found a spot between two of the tanks that mostly hid him in shadows.

They could see him clearly for a moment, before the cyborg apparently realized he had been discovered, because he suddenly coiled up, hooking his toes through the catwalk, and scrambled over the top. He crouched, and exploded up into the air, grabbing a walkway twelve meters overhead and swinging further up. He kicked off the side of the tank and launched himself further up.

"Is that skeleton doing parkour?" one of the XCOM soldiers said, even as everyone started forward. Shepard didn't reply, because he quickly realized exactly where Chen was headed.

He was going straight for Garm; invisible or not, Chen knew the cat was there. Of course, he didn't need a warning from Shepard. Even as the cyborg was leaping and kicking up the side of the tank, Garm was bouncing back from his position, leveling his plasma pistol. Bolts of blinding green lanced down toward Chen.

Shepard _slowed_, sprinting down the walkway toward Garm, and saw Chen leap clear of the tanks, flying up toward Garm with his intact arm hauling back to strike. Shepard's pistol rose, tracking, and he saw Garm pull the trigger at point blank, sending a plasma beam straight into Chen's face. Flesh was seared clean off, exploding in blackened chunks, but the cyborg went straight through the heat and his arm arced down.

Garm was slammed straight down into the walkway with a sickening crunch and a splatter of blood.

Shepard watched the whole thing in terrible clarity. He saw his partner go limp at the blow from the cyborg's hand, rocket down into the floor, and bounce, limbs flailing and blood flying.

The Sentinel wasn't sure, exactly, how he'd crossed thirty meters of open ground in an eyeblink, but his vision was coated in a savage, violent crimson, and a roar of pure hatred was tearing through his mouth. Chen had landed sometime during the last thirty meter sprint, his skeletal chassis glowing white hot where half a dozen plasma bolts; Shepard had no idea who had shot him. Chen turned toward Shepard, the Sentinel closing to within arm's reach, and then Shepard's left hand clenched, mass effect fields forming around his fist.

He raised his hand, and Shepard smote Edgar Chen with a left cross. Kinetic barriers collapsed as the Sentinel's armored knuckles collided with the side of the cyborg's jaw, and Shepard watched in detailed, wrenching slow motion as Chen's jaw deformed under the blow, artificial muscle tearing and the body spinning around so swiftly that it seemed to be moving at normal speed.

The impact sent Chen's chassis tumbling sideways and straight over the side of the walkway. He smashed into one of the tanks below and lay there for a moment, systems apparently stunned by Shepard's punch.

"McTavish!" Shepard shouted, and marked the target, before turning toward his downed partner. Plasma erupted behind him while he crouched beside the Garm's limp body, checking vitals - or the lack thereof.

Garm was dead. No question. Chen's blow and the impact on the walkway had been too much for the cat's body, especially with its small mass. Cortical stack was intact, of course, and Garm's ego was backed up. But still...

"Go and drink well, friend," Shepard said with a grim nod, standing. "I'll see you again when you resleeve."

"Bastard's fast, he's making a runner!" McTavish was shouting, and Shepard turned back to the side of the walkway. Chen was indeed back up and scrambling away even while being hammered by four plasma weapons. The roar of an alloy cannon sounded, and the cyborg's right leg exploded in a cloud of components and EC fluid. The vahlenite spike imbedded itself in the top of the tank; its velocity was dialed back so that it wouldn't accidentally blow a hole in the entire habitat.

The cyborg - now nothing but a plasma-riddled skeleton propelled by burnt artificial muscle - managed to hurl itself forward off the side of the tank with its one intact leg. It crashed hard onto a catwalk thirty meters down.

Shepard jumped down after it, _slowing_ so that he could properly aim his grapple line, and swung on the end of the line to land heavily on a catwalk a few meters above the one Chen had collided with. The one-armed, one-legged cyborg twisted his head back up toward Shepard, now resembling a deformed human skull.

"You killed my partner, asshole," Shepard snarled. "That's just another of him in Valhalla, as he'd put it, but I'm not letting you walk away."

Whether Chen could even understand what he was saying was unclear. Shepard wasn't sure if the mind in that skull was human, or if it was like the other stupidly-durable cyborg that had tried to kill XCOM personnel today. But Chen definitely didn't want to be captured, as the cyborg hurled itself off the side of the catwalk and took another tumble.

Shepard dropped down after it, using his grapple to slow his descent, and kept pace. The cyborg kept moving, awkwardly tossing itself down the side of the tank and the latticework of catwalks and stairways. Shepard quickly realized that this wasn't a blind panic, either. Chen was headed somewhere, and the Sentinel picked up speed, keeping pace with the cyborg's inelegant tumbles.

_Major?_ McTavish messaged. Shepard could hear the troopers starting down the stairs overhead, but they didn't mount grapples on their armor like he did.

_Try to catch up if you can,_ Shepard replied. _He's running to somewhere on the bottom floor. Can't let him escape or hide._

_Copy that, sir. We're a bit above you but we'll catch up. Hensha police are coming in behind us, they'll pick up the pieces and the kitten's stack._

Shepard sent an acknowledgement, but kept dropping and swinging after the cyborg, _slowing_ to get his aim and the timing of his landings right.

They both hit the bottom level a few moments later, ending up beneath the massive specters of millions of gallons of freshwater suspended in gigantic cylinders just a few meters overhead. Chen landed first in a crashing heap of battered and burned metal, and Shepard a second afterward, touching down lightly and releasing his grapple line. The Sentinel walked toward the cyborg as it pushed itself up on its one intact arm, coiling the remaining leg underneath itself. The mangled head swiveled toward Shepard, gleaming eyes fixing him from less than a few meters away.

"Still here," the Sentinel snarled, raising his plasma pistol. "Stop running or this gets messy."

Chen sprang up and scrambled away on his intact arm and leg, movements swift but jerky and sending it scuttling away in a crab-like gait toward the outgoing pipe, the movements unpredictable enough that Shepard held his fire. The Sentinel ran after it, not bothering to slow, his armor more than enough of a boost to keep up with the cyborg. He looked past the scuttling pile of mangled cyberware, and saw one of the outflow pipes about twenty ahead, looking less like plumbing and more like a subway or tram tunnel: a huge tube big enough to drive a Beowulf IFV through, running perpendicular to Chen's path.

And one of the sealed maintenance hatches on the side of the pipe was sliding open.

_That_ was where Chen had been fleeing to.

But the pipes were supposed to be locked down to prevent anyone from escaping in this direction. How the hell was it opening now?

_Chen has help,_ Shepard realized, and sent that message to McTavish as he sighted the cyborg with his pistol again.

Chen leapt for the opening, and Shepard fired. Two shots, dead center in the back. Green plasma bore into the cyborg as it reached the opening, blasting deep into its torso, and it jerked violently, arm flying outward.

The body then toppled, falling at the entrance to the hatch. The intact arm scrabbled up toward the doorway, jerking and weak, gripping the edge and pulling itself forward.

A pale-skinned hand, human, organic, reached through from the hatch and gripped Chen by the wrist. Shepard ground to a halt, aiming down the pistol's sights at the figure who emerged.

"Ah, I see," spoke a rasping voice, low and sharp, the tone curious but understanding. "My hound, mauled by one of XCOM's. Unfortunate."

The man was tall and lean, pale-skinned, with black, close-cut, slicked-back hair. His nose, chin, and cheekbones were sharp and thin, bladelike, matching his build. He wore a dull gray coat that hung past his knees, closed in the front and belted at the waist. It was an SDC Navy officer's coat, speckled with blood around the collar.

His eyes glowed a molten, dark purple, and it matched the faint corona of psychic energy surrounding him, striations of blood red slicing through it like veins in marble.

The psychic aura spread down through his hand and washed over Chen's mangled remains, and then the cyborg went limp. The aura faded, and the man exhaled, shaking his head.

"His actual name was Metzirov," the man in the coat rasped. "An unimaginitive one, but… devoted, in his way. The resleeving took almost all of his powers, but the alterations… well, he wasn't really human anymore. A quick and painless end, after all of his suffering, to bring me what he had learned."

"Who are you?" Shepard asked, making sure the rest of the team was getting his feeds as they descended.

"You came down here because of the unfolding international incident overhead," the psychic replied, and his narrow face was split by a knowing smile. He held up a hand, gesturing to the ceiling. "To find the missing pieces, so that the butchers can rest easy? Bring back their precious psychic weapons, so they can lift the blockade, and everything goes back to the way it was."

"I asked you a question," Shepard said, finger tightening around the trigger, but he could guess what he was dealing with.

The psionic abilities, the treating of others as minions or toys, the monologuing. This was a psychic who'd broken, overused his powers and damaged his mind, maybe hurt himself in a nova incident. Maybe not fully insane, but definitely twisted by his own abilities. He either needed help, or a plasma beam through the forehead. Shepard just had to figure out which, fast.

"And you deserve an answer," the psychic replied, and inclined his head.

"My name is Paxton Fettel. Let us discuss matters in private."

He didn't move, but red-tinged purple energy surged up around Shepard. He _slowed_, pulling the trigger on his pistol, but by the time he'd started to fire, the energy closed around him. Force slammed against his back, a violent pull from the psychic that managed to exert power in spite of the disruptive psi-cloak Shepard wore, and he was hurled toward the gaping hatch.

Fettel stepped back, a thin smile on his lips, and Shepard tumbled past him into the darkness.

* * *

Within the debriefing simulspace, Marshal Disler wondered if they'd give him something to drink. His simulated throat was getting a bit dry.

"What makes Paxton Fettel such a clear threat?"

The black-metal woman sat straight and still, giving nothing away, but Disler was accustomed to that.

"For one thing, unlike the Betas, he didn't resleeve when the lab was destroyed," Disler said. "Both Betas jumped to new bodies during the escape. That screws up psionic abilities until they can readjust. Fettel, on the other hand, kept his original body. If the security footage and last reports were accurate."

Disler leaned back in his chair, ticking off his other points on his fingers as he spoke.

"For another, he's an Energy Seven and Manifestation Six, while also a Mental Eight, but his Empath rating is minimal. No combat paralysis. Third, he underwent minimal alteration to achieve his current capabilities, unlike the Betas and the Deltas, so he's suffered no neural degradation. He's almost fully sane, or was, before the Synchronicity Event. Who's on point for the cleanup?"

"Marburg, sir," the metal woman replied, and Disler nodded.

"Conrad. Good man. He'll understand." Disler paused, thinking. "The more I consider it, the more likely it was a coordinated external attack."

"How so?" she asked.

"We had to have alerted someone. A competitor, or an intelligence agency from one of the other alliances. Hell, maybe a FEAR unit from the PPA picked up some of the testing we were using," Disler said. "In retrospect, we should have held off on the range-enhancement process until we were more certain about the Gallop copies."

"That will be for the Board to decide, sir," the interviewer replied, and he nodded. "Continue, please."

"SDC needed continent-scale control for the Replicas," he said, speaking as much to himself as to her. "Psi-sensitive Replicas are very new, but still, workable. We just had trouble with getting Mentals able to control them. The combat sensitivity from Empathy was such a massive hurdle, and the surgeries needed to alter Mentals to suppress their Empath powers left too many unusable commanders. Still, the Gallop copies boosted their range and signal resolution. It let them more precisely control the new Replicas. So our versions of the Gallops are finally operational. If nothing else, the Board needs to know that we've finally managed to make a workable version of them."

"I'll note that in my report sir," she said, and leaned forward slightly. Disler could see his simulated reflection in the dark metal. "You were able to boost the Commanders' effective range? Were you concerned about side effects?"

"We were always concerned about side effects," Disler said, shaking his head. Cleanup wasn't supposed to be concerned about these things, but whatever. "These devices were built from Ethereal communications technology after all. But boosting the Commanders' range must have done something. Allowed someone else's Empaths to communicate with them somehow. Someone was able to trigger a Synchronicity Event."

He shivered. Synchronicity was the ugly, _ugly_ word no one wanted to hear when dealing with Mentals. A strong Mental who could telepathically connect to another psychic's mind could potentially forge a direct psionic link, creating the psionic equivalent of a quantum communicator. It was a difficult event to replicate, but it had been done before, including once during the Ethereal War when Colonel Durand had used the primary Gallop device to Synchronize with the Ethereals themselves.

Of course, the current machines were far safer; they weren't using them to communicate with the Ethereals, after all, just as mechanisms to artificially induce amplification events. The aftereffects were what was worrying.

"Someone Synchronized with our psychics, and used that link to destroy the entire operation," Disler said. "They then provided the Betas with bodies to resleeve into and helped both them and Fettel escape. Its the only…."

He stopped, staring at the metal woman, pieces coming together.

"Who the fuck are you?" he snarled. "Cleanup knows these details. Marburg wouldn't waste my fucking time asking about this."

The metal woman stared at him for a few moments, before leaning back in her chair and shaking her head.

"Time appears to be up," she said. "Are you going to remain cooperative? I am not programmed to be cruel, but I need more information from you."

"Do you think this is the first time I've been killed and my stack taken?" Disler said, and sat back in his chair. He sighed, weariness settling over him, and shook his head while executing the security programs. They could limit him in simulspace, but his cortical stack was his own.

"You should have been more careful," he said, and managed a tired smile, before his vision blurred and went dark.

The Disler avatar went still, and the metal woman muttered an annoyed curse as she closed the simulation.

* * *

"Crap," Garrus muttered as he looked over the terminal, setting his slushie aside.

He and Alison were in a small warehouse they had rented in an industrial section of Xin Hengsha. The interior was cleared out of its previous contents, which the smell indicated had been a large amount of harvested fish and kelp, so they kept their olfactory filters on. In its stead the pair had set up a series of workstations, servers, and terminals, one of which was isolated and dedication to analyzing suspicious data storage and interrogating cortical stacks or AIs. The entire setup was collapsible and could be evacuated or destroyed in minutes.

He'd taken up guard duty this time, keeping an eye on the building and the equipment while Alison sat on the floor in a lotus position beside the interrogation terminal, wires inserted into jacks hidden behind her ears.

An alert popped up on the terminal, and Garrus's fingers flew over the haptic display for a moment, before he realized what had happened: the cortical stack had been outfitted with a data scrambler, which could be triggered if the ego it carried realized it was being coerced or interrogated. Disler had just wiped himself.

Alison's eyes opened, and she hissed, yanking the jacks out of her skull.

"Holy shit you colossal _fucking_ morons," she snarled.

"What happened?" Garrus asked. He paused. No, it was obvious what had happened. "How bad was it?"

"Garrus, tell me, how bad is 'They tried using Gallop machines as signal boosters for their psychics'?" she said.

He stared at her for a moment, jaw dropping a bit. His understanding of human history was short and straightforward, but his education after joining up with Alison's organization had been more focused and eye opening. He knew what Gallop devices were, and that knowledge was terrifying.

"I sincerely hope you're joking," Garrus replied. She shook her head. "Damn."

She stood, frowning in thought, and began to pace.

"Okay, so best case scenario: some other power bloc picked up their psychics and Synchronized, then sabotaged the entire operation. Its just another bit of covert nastiness between the superpowers. We can deal with that. Go public with the psionic end, send the Gallop insanity to XCOM. SDC loses face, ATC gets censured and maybe throws up a few people's heads on pikes, the blockade ends and status quo resumes. Go us."

"Worst case scenario," Garrus replied, "is that it wasn't a human superpower that Synchronized with ATC's psychics. It was something else."

"Goddamn CASE BLOODY JESTER," she said. "Or a CASE CHIMERA SUNRISE."

Garrus' mandibles twitched, a gesture that, like most, were carried over when his brain was switched from meatware to cyberware. The first of the scenarios Alison suggested was bad. But the second was catastrophic

Garrus loosed a mechanical sigh, pushing himself to his feet.

"Working for you is always interesting," he said. "Also terrifying. And periodically revolting."

"Neither of us has a conventional or organic digestive system, Garrus," she replied with a tired grin.

"I know. Isn't it awesome?" he asked, scooping up his rifle and another slushie to go. "What's the plan?"

"Disler's stack is cooked. The simulspace recording won't pass muster; anyone could fake something like that." She frowned, and shook her head. "Only thing I can think of is send what we have to XCOM, and then find Fettel. Bring him in alive as proof."

And hopefully end this whole impending international incident, and find out who was behind everything, for better or worse.

* * *

**Author's Note: **Additional information on human diplomatic relations and XCOM procedure available in the Codex.


	11. Nine: NEPTUNE DAGGER Part Two

"Synchronicity" is a word with a special meaning among those who work with psionics. We have yet to precisely understand the mechanisms behind it - a frustratingly common trend among psionics as a whole. What we do know is that in certain circumstances, psychics who have a strong Mental rating are able to telepathically "link" with another psychic, usually (but by no means exclusively) with a strong Mental rating of their own. This link allows for an exchange of data between the individuals linked, no matter the distance. In effect, Synchronization turns the two psychics into a sort of quantum-entangled pair. The effect, as far as we can tell, persists over a prolonged period, although a lack of communication will allow the connection to deteriorate and eventually end altogether.

This should not be confused with "mindspace" interaction between psychics. In that scenario, a short-term, mutually-shared hallucination is formed between two who bear the Gift, constructed out of elements of their respective subconscious. This allows for rapid communication between psychically sensitive individuals, but it is highly unstable, and can usually be collapsed by one party or the other with focused effort. Only the strongest Mentals are able to sustain a mindspace connection for longer than a few minutes, and the effect has none of the long-term aftereffects of a Synchronicity event. It can also only be formed between Gifted; non-psionics are completely immune to the effect.

**-Doctor George Pokorski, XCOM Psionic Corps researcher**

* * *

**_Chapter Nine: Operation: NEPTUNE DAGGER - Part Two_**

* * *

Screaming and heat hammered Shepard. Smoke, the stench of dozens of materials set ablaze, including human flesh, pummeled his nose, and he forced his eyes open.

He stood in a sea of bodies.

They looked human, at least in body shape, but their armor was clearly not vahlenite or a derivative, and the weapons lying among them were kinetic mass accelerators. The colors and models of their equipment were uniform, even though Shepard _knew_ they had never been that way. He stood knee-deep in the corpses, dozens of ruined bodies littering the street between the module-stacks of a colony city. The corpses were broken, shot with kinetic and energy weapons, bodies charred and twisted. The only light was a smoke-choked red burning down from overhead and spots of reddish-gold from distant fires raging through the streets.

Mindoir.

"Intriguing," Paxton Fettel murmured from behind him, and Shepard whirled. His sidearm was in his hand, and Shepard snapped it up, the green glow from its lines turning into a sickly yellow in the red light. The psychic stood atop the carpet of batarian corpses, his formerly gray coat soaked in blood, and his eyes turned up toward the bloody sky.

"It is always interesting to enter someone else's mind," Fettel spoke, turning his head to gaze of the ravaged, burning colony. "To see their fixations. Their obsessions. What defines-"

Shepard shot him, a bolt of yellow-green fury vaporizing Fettel's head and neck. The body toppled, dissipating into a cloud of expanding black smoke.

"I suppose I shouldn't expect manners from you," Fettel continued, to Shepard's left. He spun, leveling his pistol at the apparition, who was ambling idly along one side of the street, stepping atop the bodies of the slavers who had burned Shepard's home.

Shepard nearly shot him again, but held his fire this time. Everything thus far indicated that this was a constructed mindspace created by telepathy, a virtual environment constructed from the subconscious of those involved. Usually these were formed from the minds of those initiating the connection, but could draw from details and memories of any of the participants.

And clearly Fettel had built it out of Shepard's subconscious. The fact that Fettel had managed to draw his mind in despite Shepard's mental resistance and that he was wearing a psi-cloak spoke that either Fettel was immensely powerful, or that Shepard needed to have a stern talking-to with the armory techs who maintained his gear.

"Then again," Fettel said with a shrug, "most minds I've had the pleasure of talking to on this level show me something similar. The… carpet of dead mercenaries is a nice change of pace, however. Usually there are only one or two bodies that they fixate on. Sometimes a room, or a house. Rarely there will be a crashing vehicle or spaceship."

Shepard lowered his sidearm, thinking while listening to the psychic ramble. Fettel had killed Chen, or Matzirov, or whatever his name really was, and implied he was responsible for the cyborg's actions. Which implied he was connected to Disler's murder, and possibly the SDC psionics lab. The fact that he had gone to the trouble of creating a mindspace instead of attacking or killing Shepard directly indicated he wanted to talk.

"Why did you bring me here?" Shepard asked.

"Because you are both an agent of XCOM, and the first psychic I have met in recent years who was not insane, or quickly driven to that state by experimentation," Fettel said. "That allows you a certain freedom of intellect and action that most lack."

Shepard scowled, shaking his head. He started concentrating, pushing outward with the psychic energy that ran through his body. What could strengthen the body could be used to empower the mind as well.

"We're all hounds, to one master or another," the psychic rasped. "At least you are more free-willed than dogs. XCOM Sentinels have to be, and that is useful to me at the moment."

Shepard's power ran through body, intensifying his mental defenses, and the bodies and burning structures surrounding him and Fettel began to grow hazy and indistinct as he pressed against the mindscape the psychic had built. Fettel's words abruptly halted.

"Stop _monologuing_," Shepard said. "I'm not some weak-willed Mental you can play games with, Fettel. You brought me here to talk, and _you_ don't have time to be obtuse. Get to the point."

Fettel stared at Shepard for a moment, and then…

He smiled. He then chuckled, and stepped forward, toward the Sentinel.

"Excellent," the insane psychic said. "Very well. You are here because of the blockade. The blockade is being perpetuated because the SDC is terrified they will lose their precious toys. Or… toy, now. Matzirov is dead, and I believe you seized Allmon's brain, or what is left of it, when you landed at the docks."

"The one puppeting those workers," Shepard said, and Fettel nodded.

"Even less strong or imaginative than Matzirov. Forced to rely on technology instead of his own powers. When they spoke to us, he fell into their thrall entirely. But-" He held up a hand. "I speak ahead of myself. The point, as you requested."

Fettel began to pace around Shepard, stepping over the armored corpses filling the street, rising and falling with each body he walked upon.

"The Chinese have always been deeply interested in Armacham Technology Corporation's many… products. Myself among them, as well as the Replica." He paused, exhaling. "Little enough difference, I suspect."

"You're saying you were trained by Armacham?" Shepard asked, a bit skeptical. Extranet rumors were always going on about secret psychic training cabals, but most of those were just conspiracy theories. The _actual_ secret psychic programs had PsiCorps minders watching them like hawks. Then again, SDC's lab had been kept secret from XCOM for some time. It was _possible _Armacham could have been running their own psychic program under the radar, but Shepard didn't know how a corporation could have kept it secret from XCOM Intelligence and PsiCorps.

"Armacham has many contracted military projects, for a wide number of clients," Fettel replied. "I am far from the first psychic child they have trained, although they go to extreme lengths to hide it."

"You'll forgive me for being doubtful," Shepard said, and Fettel shrugged.

"It makes no difference whether you believe I was raised in a box with an ATC logo on the side or not," Fettel said, his words bitter. "But you will find no record of me in any PsiCorps academy or sanctioned school. The methods they used to teach me were… not compatible with PsiCorps' ethics. A focus on speedily developing psionic capabilities, no matter how painful or damaging."

He continued pacing over the bodies, boots crunching occasionally when they found a particularly charred corpse.

"I digress. My childhood has only a tangential relationship to the reason we are here. The SDC was enamored of the idea of a Replica army of absolute loyalty. More palatable than a legion of drones or mechs, especially with Citadel electronic warfare capability. But there was always the issue of subversion. Voice commands fell out of favor for neural programming, but such things could be compromised. The forays into Replica controlled by psychics was highly appealing. Thus, SDC contracted Armacham to develop Project Perseus, which tragically ended just a few days previously."

Fettel's smile as he said that made it clear how he felt about the "tragedy."

"Psychically-sensitive Replica are nothing new," Shepard said, and Fettel nodded as he moved around the street, treading on the broken remains.

"The technology has been around for years, but it has always been imperfect," Fettel mused. "Cloned brains able to receive input from a Mental. A suitable psychic could control a squad, or even a platoon, but… SDC was more ambitious. They wanted a commander who could control entire armies. A psychic commander able to command and receive input from tens of thousands, or hundreds of thousands of Replica, waging wars across entire worlds."

Shepard frowned at that, and shook his head. Remote psionic control was one of many threats that Sentinels, especially PsiCorps Sentinels, had to study in detail. What Fettel was talking about, however… it wasn't _impossible_, but it was extremely difficult. Quite simply, no known psychic could handle the raw amount of data from that many Replica at once. One could get perfect battlefield intelligence and precise control over a small group of Replica, but tens or hundreds of thousands? It would drive a human mind mad.

"Yes, a quite challenging prospect," Fettel agreed. "One would need to greatly increase the power and capacity of a Mental to achieve that goal. Which would require a great deal of invasive and destructive _experimentation_."

The last words were delivered with a low snarl, and flickers of red light washed off Fettel as he spoke them.

"SDC funds bankrolled the project, but the blood was on the hands of Armacham researchers. Many passed through the labs," Fettel said, stopping in place and turning toward Shepard. "Very few in any usable state. Those of us who showed the most promise, they… selected for a particular procedure. The specifics are beyond me. I do not remember the precise process, but what resulted was…. _enlightening._"

Something about the way he said that triggered Shepard's mental alarms.

"What do you remember?" Shepard asked, taking a step forward.

"Light. Information." Fettel closed his eyes, his head twitching, like he was being prodded with electrical shocks. "A sea of data, as though I were an infomorph buried in the extranet, but it wasn't electronic. It was pure knowledge, pure psychic power. And when it was over, I heard and saw. A blind, deaf man whose sensed were restored. And what I could feel through my new senses was _glorious_."

His eyes opened, and his smile returned.

"And they told me to wait. To prepare."

"Who?" Shepard asked, anxious. This all sounded like a Synchronicity event. But that would mean that….

"Those who would muzzle me," Fettel replied with a chuckle. "I am unsure precisely what was speaking to me through the connection, but I knew of their intent."

Connection? Shepard felt a sudden chill. An abrupt boost to psionic power, coupled with this talk of connections and voices? Definitely Synchronicity, but the only thing he could think of that could both boost power and enable communication was….

No. No, ATC couldn't have been _that_ idiotic. They hadn't connected Fettel to an unsecured _Gollop device_, had they?

"I knew they would use me," Fettel said, "just as Armacham tried to use me. Matzirov and Allmon fell into their promises, but I saw the chains they would bind us with. I agreed to their help, and when the time came, we wreaked a glorious slaughter upon our captors."

His fists clenched tight, knuckles popping.

"They gave Allmon and Matzirov new bodies, but I recognized the trap. When I escaped, I did so as a free man, in my own body."

Fettel's smile turned to a vicious grimace.

"I am _not_ their hound. I am no one's. My path is my own, for the first time in my life, and I will pave it in their _corpses_."

* * *

Fleet Admiral Steven Hackett loomed on the bridge of the _XCS Honjo Masamune, _his scarred visage dark and unwelcoming. He had once been accusing of being "allergic to smiling" and it was an apt description. He'd had a long career, earning one scar after another, and he didn't believe in erasing the marks one earned in war, whether physical or mental. Only when he'd resleeved had he ever lost his previous scarring, and he'd worn his current body for thirty years of service, and it bore the marks.

He wondered if he would earn more before this operation was over with. Putting his Strike Four task force between the PPA and SDC navies over Proteus was just inviting an event that could result in many medals and new bodies being passed around for his crewmen. The fact that the SDC and PPA officers responsible would be pretty much lynched by their respective commands for even scratching an XCOM ship would be mild comfort. They were still parking their task force between two angry, near-hostile navies in the midst of an international crisis. One moron making one bad decision could trigger a bloodbath humanity could ill afford.

He looked over the sensor feeds and the system-wide hologram in the CIC. The SDC's fleet was holding orbit over Proteus, maintaining their blockade over the major undersea settlements as well as the smaller ones and the few bits of land area poking above the waves, where land installations had been built by one faction or another. The PPA had concentrated their own task force ahead of the planet's orbit, outside of effective weapons range, though their position meant they could simply launch kinetic weapons back toward the planet at the SDC fleet.

The fact that the SDC had to spread its fleet across Proteus' orbit also meant that if the PPA started shooting, they'd have advantage in force concentration, which was why Hackett had been forced to concentrate Strike Four in orbit ahead of the planet as well. Keeping a middling distance between the two navies would let XCOM pick off any outgoing munitions, but it also meant that if one of them wanted to open fire they would have to neutralize the XCOM fleet first. On top of that, forcing Strike Four to hold its current position left them in an inconvenient position to support the ground teams. XCOM ships had to pass through the SDC blockade to get anywhere, which slowed them down further.

And on top of that, the Citadel had sent a bipedal weapon of mass destruction to observe and try to defuse the situation. Or rather, Saren Arterius had invited himself using his Spectre status, and apparently no one on the SDC side had the spine or authority to refuse him. His frigate hung in station-keeping orbit over Xin Hengsha, while his shuttle had descended about fifteen minutes ago. By now he would have long since landed at the spaceport and gotten to work.

An alert popped up on Hackett's feeds while he was contemplating _that_ happy thought. One of the infomorphs monitoring the sensor reports from the fleet had spotted something.

_Go ahead, Lieutenant,_ Hackett sent to the officer heading the sensor operators.

_Sir, we've got an anomaly on the hyperwave scanners covering Proteus,_ the Lieutenant replied.

_Send me the data,_ Hackett ordered, and brought up his own feed. He paced over to his command chair and sat down while the data uploaded.

He saw a hyperwave plot of the planet, including the gleaming points indicating SDC warships orbiting the planet, with ship size, type, and model coupled with estimates on weaponry and crew counts hovering next to them. The hyperwave readings were fuzzier the closer one got to the planet's magnetic fields, and the constant thunderstorms sweeping the planet didn't help either. They had a hard time scanning anything underneath those storms, which was why they relied on other sensor types. Yet another reason why SDC had built their psionics lab here.

It would be a different matter if the hyperwave was in-atmosphere. The peculiarities of the sensor system allowed ground-based arrays to provide a complete picture of human (and otherwise) activity from inside its magnetic field, but none of the Proteus colonies were large enough to warrant a hyperwave system. The ideal setup was to have a hyperwave scanner on the surface and another in orbit to get a full picture of what was happening.

It took a few moments for Hackett to spot the anomaly, even with the informorphs marking the area where they detected it. It was in Proteus' upper hemisphere, near the north pole, where temperature and pressure differences were currently causing massive and violent arctic storms. The timestamp for the reports indicated that for several seconds, at about ten minutes ago, there had been an abrupt surge of energy amid one of the most intense storms. The radiation markers were consistent with elerium-based machinery.

Hackett frowned, considering the radiation spike. It could have been the activation of an elerium-based power system, but the spike was too abrupt and cut off too quickly. The destruction of a surface facility or airborne craft using a large elerium reactor could have such an effect. A DV drive's wormhole generated radiation spikes in a similar band, but no one had yet been able to figure out how to open a wormhole inside a planet's gravity well.

The admiral considered the current situation, and glanced at the plots showing the fleets standing off over Proteus.

_Comms, prepare a message, _he sent after several minutes' consideration. _Broadcast on SDC, PPA, and XCOM military channels._

_Ready, sir,_ replied the comms officer.

_All ships in-system, this is Admiral Hackett_,_ XCOM Strike Taskforce Four,_ he sent. _Possible unidentified ship in-atmosphere at Proteus. XCOM ships are going to standby alert. Recommend same._

_Message away,_ the comms officer sent back after a moment.

"Good," Hackett murmured out loud. He wasn't sure what that anomaly was, but he was going to be ready for any eventuality. They hadn't found anything out of the ordinary during the psionic sweep drill, but he was keeping his eyes open.

There was too much weirdness going on right now.

* * *

The mindscape trembled, corpses and smoke and fire becoming fuzzy once more as Shepard pushed against Fettel's will.

"If you want revenge, I can help you," the Sentinel said. Fettel peered at him for a moment through the red haze.

"How would you do that?" the psychic asked.

"All of the evidence of what SDC and Armacham did is at the bottom of the ocean," Shepard said. "The only proof that any of this happened is either twisted into an unrecognizable form, or dead. Except you."

Assuming anything Fettel was saying was true, of course. He could have just been completely batshit. Gollop machines were not kind on the psyche, even when one didn't link up with some horrifying alien consciousness on the other side.

"Why should I care about _proof_?" Fettel rasped in response, a snarl stretching across his features. "I know what was done to me. I need to prove it to no one."

"You've got two options, Fettel," Shepard said, continuing to push. "You come with me, and with XCOM's help, we bring down the people in Armacham who tortured you. The other option is you go on a rampage on your own, I take you down hard, and you end up dead or back in a permanent isolation cell."

"I do not seek legal vengeance, Shepard," Fettel replied, and his voice became sharper and harsher. "I seek _blood_. I want to see them torn down, to taste their blood, and to crush each and every backup drive and cortical stack between my fingers after ripping their throats out with my teeth and crushing their _skulls _with my _mind_."

His eyes glowed red as he spoke those last words, and he leaned closer.

"Will you offer me that, Shepard?"

"No," the Sentinel said, and threw everything he had against Fettel's mindspace. The figures blurred, becoming watery and indistinct, and Fettel's hiss of rage filled Shepard's ears.

"Then _stay out of my way,_" the psychic snarled, and the mindscape collapsed.

There was a sharp, piercing scream, like a blade dragged along the edge of another, but raised in pitch and amplified a dozen times over. Shepard felt an instant of vertigo, a blast of static washing over his implants in the wake of the scream, and he fell backward into shadow.

Pitch blackness surrounded him, save for a ghostly aura of red-tinged purple light surrounding a lean figure a few meters away. Red eyes burned in the darkness.

Shepard deployed his helmet immediately, and activated his thermal sensors as he brought his pistol up - the real one, this time. As everything was replaced by high-resolution grays and whites, Fettel standing out directly in front of the Sentinel, one hand raised idly. Wisps of energy circled between them, thin white bits of mist on the thermal sensors. Shepard's own limited psionic senses warned him that Fettel was projecting a barrier between them.

_Maybe I shouldn't have shot him first,_ he thought, while still covering the lunatic psychic.

They were inside a pipe, Shepard guessed, one large enough for a small truck to easily drive down. There were no internal lights, which meant it was likely one of the pipes for pumping processed water into the colony itself.

"Time is short, Shepard," Fettel rasped in the darkness. "Ever since I gazed into that endless glory, that shining void of power and knowledge, my dreams have spoken of an inevitable truth. _War_ is coming. Fire sweeping over the earth. Bodies in the streets. Cities turned to dust."

For an instant, a ghost hovered behind Fettel, a lean, robed figure of shadows, head hidden behind a hooded helmet, and four long, skeletal arms extending toward the psychic.

"_Retaliation."_

The ghost vanished, and Fettel took a step backward.

"I will see my revenge before that day," he rasped.

"I can't let you go on a killing spree, Fettel," Shepard spoke, firm and determined, and matched Fettel's step.

"You cannot hope to stop me," the psychic replied with a smile.

**"I find that unlikely."**

Shepard heard the faint hiss of a current-gen camouflage cloak only a few meters behind him. He glanced behind him as a marker appeared on his HUD, a pale blue square that indicated a likely friendly IFF right behind him. Shepard expected to see a heavy tactical drone or suit of armor.

When he turned, he saw a two-meter tall quadrupedal war machine built like something between a panther's long limbs and a bear's hefty bulk. The body was covered in flexible, thin layers of long, sharp-edged, jagged armor plating, and sprouting from its shoulders and back were three long-barreled cannons that like Shepard quickly concluded had the words "armor" and "rapid" repeated multiple times in their descriptions. On the front of the war machine, however, was not an animal head, but instead a distorted, lengthened, and much larger version of the familiar avian-like features of a turian, cast in dark metal but with bright, glowing eyes.

**"You are Fettel,"** the heavy, grating, mechanical voice spoke. **"I have already surmised you have abducted an XCOM Sentinel, and from his accusations, you intend to commit multiple murders if you escape."**

The heavy cannons on the mech's back were locked onto Paxton Fettel's chest.

**"You will surrender immediately."**

"You have no comprehension of the power you face in me," the psychic said. "Mere mechs and guns will not halt me."

**"I possess sufficient firepower in this platform to destroy an armored battalion, human,"** the mech replied.** "Along with clear lines of fire and zero legal or moral compunctions against using them. I am Saren Arterius, Citadel Special Tactics and Recon, and in this pipe, I am the reigning deity. Surrender."**

Fettel's barrier stretched out, power pulsing forward and intensifying. Shepard took a step back, pinging Saren's comm, and an instant later got a response.

_Psionic field, extending toward you,_ the Sentinel messaged.

_My brain is not organic,_ Saren replied, his message tinged with eager anticipation.

_He's a very strong Kinetic,_ Shepard sent. _Psionic shielding won't stop him._

_That would be more problematic,_ Saren agreed. If anything, however, that thought seemed even more eager. _Were I human. Or organic._

Hell. Shepard was stuck between _two_ lunatics with god-complexes.

_Where's my team?_ Shepard asked.

_I left them to guard the hatch,_ Saren replied. _They were unwilling, but I convinced them that acting as rear guard would be in their best interests._

"I kneel before no one, Spectre," Fettel snarled, pulsing psionic power filling the entire freshwater pipe.

**"Sufficient firepower forces weakness in everyone's joints, Fettel,"** Saren replied, the mech leaning forward.

The psychic's hostile snarl twisted at those words, becoming a tight smile, eyes shimmering.

Shit.

_Shoot him!_ Shepard messaged, slowing time.

Thus, he was able to hear the deep, resounding echo of breaking metal, stretched out from a sharp, piercing peal to an overwhelming deep note. Shepard could see the afterimage of the psionic force that had stabbed into the wall of the pipe between Fettel and the pair leveling guns at him.

At the current depth, the water outside was under a not-insignificant pressure, although the city was built well above anything like crush depth. Thus, seawater _exploded_ into the pipe through the hole Fettel had abruptly blown open, and it slid off his barrier, hitting the opposite side of the pipe and spraying toward the Sentinel and Spectre.

Shepard leapt backwards away from the wall of water, and could watch in slow motion as Saren reacted, in a manner that was totally predictable in hindsight: He opened fire.

The three cannons on the quadruped mech's back unloaded simultaneously, one releasing a massive blast of blinding plasma. The second sprayed a column of kinetic rounds, while the third blasted heavy anti-armor slugs once a second. In his current state of slowed time, Shepard could watch the steam exploding outward around the Spectre's gunfire, instantly enveloping the mech. More seawater sprayed and poured around Saren, and Shepard could sense Fettel's barrier beyond the incoming flood, barely flickering. The water must have been absorbing most of the energy of the shots, and breaching the gap in the pipe at such speeds that it deflected the kinetic energy of most of the bullets away from the barrier.

And Fettel was retreating, running up the pipe faster than a normal human could manage.

Water was rapidly flooding the pipe, already pushing against Shepard's knees, and more steam was filling the pipe with each plasma shot. He didn't know how long Fettel's barrier would last, especially with him moving away from it, but they had only a few moments before the pipe filled completely.

_Saren, we have to retreat!_

_Then retreat, organic. I don't need to breathe._

Shepard scowled behind his mask, then checked his local map. They were only about sixty meters from the hatch where Fettel had pulled him through. Shepard pointed his arm back up the pipe and fired his grappling hook, yanking himself away from the Spectre trying to batter down Fettel's barrier. He hurtled through the air, over the rapidly ascending flood of seawater, and kicked off the pipe wall when he reached the claw's anchor point. He immediately fired again, _slowing_ time to line up his shot, and launched further up the passage, legs dragging through the rising water.

Saren was still shooting behind him, and by the moment Shepard hit the second anchor point, the water slowed, accompanied by a roaring detonation.

_Barrier down!_ Saren reported. _I am in pursuit._

_You won't catch him now,_ Shepard sent as he spotted the nearest hatch and grappled toward it.

_He cannot outrun a mass accelerator,_ Saren replied.

Shepard didn't answer, instead pinging his fireteam as he flew toward the hatch.

_This is Shepard! Open the hatch on my orders, and close it the moment I'm through! _

_Christ! Did you flood the bloody thing?_ MacTavish asked as Shepard landed next to the pipe, water rising over his chest.

_Open it!_

The hatch beeped and flew open, light spilling into the pipe, and Shepard was hauled forward by the sudden rush of seawater. He hit the floor inside the storage facility, sliding across the metal floor on a wave of water. He heard MacTavish cursing and shouting behind him, and then the flow and pressure of the water abruptly ceased. In its place Shepard heard the faint thrumming of a kinetic barrier.

"Close the hatch!" a flanged, higher-pitched turian voice barked, and Shepard rolled over. He could see MacTavish and his XCOM team levering the hatch closed, and standing behind them, a hand extended toward the pipe, was a turian female in dark armor lined with glowing blue wire-thin threads extending from a circular generator mounted in the back. When the hatch slid shut, she lowered her hand and exhaled, before turning toward Shepard.

Her face was painted bone-white, with a single red stripe slicing down the center. The unpainted portions of her skin that he could see behind the facial cartilage were a more typical yellow-brown. Dark eyes gleamed down at him as she extended her hand, and Shepard took it, letting her pull him to his feet with surprising strength. The fabric of his psi-cloak was waterproofed, so the liquid simply poured off him, pooling around the floor.

"You must be Major Shepard," the turian said. She glanced back to the pipe. "As usual, my boss went straight in shooting, without giving you a choice in the matter."

"Saren? Yeah, that would be accurate," Shepard muttered. "And you have me at a disadvantage."

The turian cocked her head to the side, before nodding. Probably figuring out what he meant by that phrase.

"Nyreen Kandros," she said. "Special biotic-tech support, assigned to Saren-Kiris. Did he say if he was going to come back out?"

"No, he went chasing after our suspect, even though the pipe was flooding," Shepard said. He frowned. What had she said? "Saren-Kiris?"

"Old Triviran dialect. Kind of like…" Her mandibles twitched. "Your Greek, or Latin? Its a number. Means Two."

"Saren-Two?" Shepard asked, and felt his heart sink a bit. Saren had forks? "There's more than one of him?"

Her mandibles spread a bit, in what Shepard knew was the turian equivalent of a guarded smile. Her eyes twitched a moment, likely looking at something on her AR, and she nodded slightly.

"Significantly," she said. "I've been instructed to take you to Saren-Vanis whenever it is convenient for you."

Shepard frowned, checking that term with a quick mesh search. It was indeed a word in old turian Triviran, meaning "One." That meant Saren's primary personality?

"Make sure we're linked on the same tac-net," Shepard said, and sent her his frequency, before looking up toward the ceiling, and the walkway far overhead.

"We'll need some time. Reports to make, bodies to recover. And I have a friend who I'm not leaving here."

* * *

"Alright, gentlemen," Admiral Hackett said as he sat down in the simulated chair at one end of the simulated table. "Let's get this underway."

His avatar matched his own physical body, and all of the XCOM personnel surrounding the table did the same - standard procedure in a serious military simulspace briefing. The room was a virtual recreation of one of the officer wardrooms on the _Masamune: _a long metal table in a gray-walled room surrounded by chairs, although devoid of the ship decorations and service records and trophies of the carrier itself.

It had been two hours since the latest incident on the surface, leaving a dead Sentinel, three dead Hengsha policemen, one dead cyborg, and a turian Spectre's Exo with far too many guns stomping around in the bowels of the colony looking for the psychic upon which this whole bout of insanity was pivoting. Bodies had been recovered, stacks had been extracted, corpses autopsied, and reports compiled.

Now it was time for summation. Present were the people conducting the current investigation: two Intelligence agents and an R&amp;D scientist. The agents were Lieutenant Morales and Captain Hasham, who had been analyzing (read: interrogating) the brain of the cyborg from the Hengsha docks. On the opposite side sat Doctor Kei Sun, the scientist who had been performing autopsies on cyborg bodies.

"What did you learn from the bodies, Doctor Sun?" Hackett asked. Sun was still for a moment, likely pulling up data reports. He was a thickset man originally of Chinese-Russian descent, but he was a serial resleever, having inhabited dozens of bodies over his lifetime, and apparently liked picking random physical features for his bodies. For a few years he had even sleeved into a modified elcor body.

"The bodies were human-model cybernetic chassis," Sun said, his voice low and deep, without a recognizable accent. "Constructed of a dense variant of vahlenite alloy, beneath an advanced weave of CNT muscle fiber augmented further by vahlenite latticework tracing through the muscle. These are rated for high-end military-grade augmentations."

He gestured, cross sections of the remains of the two cyborgs appeared over the table, with internal systems highlighted and diagrams of artificial muscle groups.

"Interestingly, the bodies were not fueled by power cells like most military models and vehicles." He gestured again, and a schematic of a cylindrical device that glowed with a faint green light. "Both cyborgs instead had a micro-elerium reactor installed in their chassis."

Hackett frowned as he looked at the scale of the devices, and how tiny they were. A single unit was the size of a human thumbnail. Small-scale elerium reactors of that size existed, but they were very rare things, because they were prohibitively expensive to miniaturize beyond a certain point while still getting sufficient energy output to be worthwhile. Sealed hydrogen-oxygen high-capacity fuel cells were far more common and far less expensive.

"The bodies were constructed primarily for extreme durability and redundancy," Sun continued. "Multiple layers of armor, shock gel cushioning delicate components inside - which themselves were greatly minimized - and multiple copies of vital systems. This explains the extreme abuse that our Sentinel team required to bring them down.

"However, most intriguing was an analysis of the recovered dermal flesh," Sun continued, bringing up images from both of the cyborgs prior to their heads and bodies being ravaged by plasma fire. "While we recovered… relatively little of the organic components of the bodies, analysis confirmed that they were human. Comparison to Neo Hengsha genetic databases confirmed that they are the original organic bodies: One Edgar Chen and one Suva Yang, both dockworkers at the Hengsha spaceport. We did a medical background check, and found that three months ago Chen went through a regular medical screening and came out with only the standard gene-modding and minor augments for heavy physical labor. Yang's last checkup was four months ago."

"So somewhere in that three month period they were… replaced," Hackett said, and Sun nodded.

"Hengsha police are doing a full background check on them," Captain Hasham said. He was a remarkably average man, and like most Intelligence agents he cultivated an appearance of boring efficiency, which worked into his own voice, coming out as a dull monotone. "Trying to find a point where they could have been abducted and had their bodies augmented. But three months of archived mesh records and sensory recordings is a lot of data to trawl."

"The augmentation would have to be quick," Sun said, thoughtful.

"Not terribly so," Hasham said. "Neither Chen nor Yang had significant social lives and worked irregular hours, according to what we've uncovered so far. They could have gone missing for a couple of days without arousing notice."

"Ideal targets for a replacement scheme," Sun mused. "And these augments are remarkably extensive and well-integrated into the organic bodies. From what we recovered, there were still significant internal organic components within the bodies. If I were to venture a guess, I would say that much of the augmented structure was assembled _inside _their bodies."

"What could have caused that? Hackett mused. "Nanomachines, Sun?"

The doctor shook his head.

"It would require very advanced nanotech machinery," he said, and Hackett nodded as he realized the implication.

"MELD," Hackett growled, and Sun nodded.

"Its the only technology we have ever encountered that's capable of doing augmentations on this scale." He shrugged. "Theoretically, it's possible existing geth, Citadel, or human nanotech could match it, but it would require weeks of therapy and many repeated surgeries, and even then I doubt it would match the sophistication of these bodies. Neither Chen nor Yang were out of contact for the required length of time."

The Admiral considered that for a moment, and turned to the Intelligence agents.

"What did you find from the brain Shepard's team recovered?"

"Lieutenant Wade's assessment on the mind within the brain was correct," Morales said. Like her superior, she was a dull, unremarkable figure and voice, matching the body she wore as an Intelligence agent. "Whatever the mind was that ran on that neural architecture, it wasn't human. Neural response patterns to stimuli did not match human brain patterns with any regularity."

"But some components did match," Hackett said, glancing over the report through one of his feeds. He understood the basics, particularly the fact that the subject had not survived the interrogation. Ugly business, and he didn't like that it happened more often than not when protected status was removed.

"Some of the more baseline, instinctual responses were human," Morales droned. "Hindbrain functions, stimulation of neural feeds from simulated organs. The brain reacted to simulated heart, respiratory, and digestive ailments as a human would. Higher brain functions were a different matter. Most simulated negative sensory reactions, particularly pain, were completely ignored. Zero neural response whatsoever.

"It was also completely uncommunicative with us. We had to force neural reactions through sensory simulation and stimulation to determine how it reacted. Images and sensory data connected with Major Shepard and his team did trigger neural responses, particularly Lieutenant Wade."

"So it was after her, specifically," Hackett said, and Morales nodded. "Hasham, I want a full investigation in possible internal leaks. If they knew we were bringing an A-tier mental down, they could know other classified data. They might have just spotted her psychic signature coming down and scrambled an ambush, but I doubt it."

"Yes, sir. I've already initiated preliminary inquiries."

"Morales, continue."

"Yes, sir," she replied. "We compared the responses with a number of other images. Humans in general triggered similar but less intense reactions. XCOM's emblem triggered a minor reaction. Curiously, images associated with the SDC or Hengsha had no hostile reaction. It wasn't until we showed the Armacham Technology logo - part of a wide range of images to test general reactions - that we got something as intense."

She paused for a moment.

"But most worrying was when we started displaying alien species. It had minimal reactions to most species, but when we started showing it images of Ethereal agents, it began having stronger reactions. When we showed it an Ethereal corpse, there was a very intense response. We then showed it a living Ethereal, and the brain had an extremely intense burst of neural activity before…. self destructing."

"Self-destructing?" Hackett had only skimmed the basics from the report, and had not read that part. "Explain."

"All neural activity ceased. Hindbrain functions remained, but there was no further response from the rest of it. No form of stimulus provoked any reaction. It was effectively brain-dead. It was almost certainly some form of internal neurosensory self-destruct response tied to the image of a living Ethereal."

"I see," Hackett said, contemplating that revelation for a few moments. "Anything further to report?"

"Nothing pertinent, sir. Details on the individual response levels and neural activity can be found in the report."

"Very well. Thank you, ladies and gentlemen. I have some considerations to make."

The scientists and agents surrounding the table vanished a moment later. Hackett stood, dismissing the table, and then opened an comm channel to the surface, bouncing through XCOM drones until he reached his target. It took a couple of seconds for Major Shepard to respond.

"Admiral, sir," he replied, a still full-body image of the Major appearing in front of Hackett. It was a representative avatar, meaning it lacked all the wear and tear - and water - from his recent set of adventures on the surface.

"Major, I read your report. I'm sorry about what happened to Garm."

"Thank you, sir," Shepard replied. "I don't think he's bothered by death the way some people are. He just says it means another copy of him is in Valhalla."

Hackett smirked at that.

"Its going to be some time before we can resleeve him. _Masamune_ has some synthetic bodies for emergencies, but no one in the fleet carries feline bodies in storage. We'll upload him into the _Masamune's_ network soon.

"In the meantime, I have an autopsy and interrogation report for you to read." Hackett sent a quick command. "It's just been sent, review it when you have time. Short version is, the cyborgs had MELD or some equivalent used to build their bodies, the one on the docks was specifically targeting Lieutenant Wade, and the brains are hardwired to self destruct if they see an Ethereal."

It took several moments for Shepard to respond.

"Shit."

"I agree on all counts, Major," Hackett replied. "Which is why I've decided to issue an alert to all XCOM ships, declaring this a BLOODY JESTER scenario."

"Sir, you could go even further and issue a CHIMERA SUNRISE."

"I don't have enough evidence for that," Hackett replied. "I'd need confirmation of an Ethereal presence to make that call. All we have are some similar technologies and neurological responses. Speaking of which, I've read your report on Paxton Fettel, and I agree with your assessment. He sounds insane, but he's… incredibly powerful, judging by the feeds and your report."

"Yes sir," Shepard replied. "I don't know if he's behind what's going on down here, but he's definitely playing a major part in all of it."

"Agreed," Hackett said. "Which is why capturing him is your number one priority. We don't have the evidence to even start a case against Armacham for whatever they've been up to, but if you can bring in Fettel, we've got something substantial. Analysis of his brain can prove Gollop exposure at the least. Not to mention an unstable psychic like him, loose in underwater habitat. That's a timebomb, Shepard."

"Yes sir," Shepard said. "I'm heading to a meeting with Saren Arterius and our Hengsha Police liaison. We're going to discuss how to capture Fettel."

"Saren," hackett growled, shaking his head. "Be careful around that one, Shepard. He's one of the Council's most respected and decorated agents, but he's also quick to resort to violence when he feels its needed. All three of the forks on that planet will be extremely dangerous."

"Three?" Shepard asked, and Hackett could guess at the Major's horrified expression.

"Six, to be accurate, although only three go on field operations," the Admiral said, checking his dossiers on Saren, mostly supplied by XCOM Intelligence. "A primary coordinator and tech specialist, a heavy combat Exo, and a stealth operations Exo. Another coordinator handles his operations from the Citadel, and he has a fifth fork managing his businesses, investments and finances. A sixth fork is kept in reserve in case he needs to quickly respond to a situation."

"That's equal parts efficient and paranoid," Shepard mused.

"He's a Spectre," Hackett replied. "As I said before, be careful. Saren will try to expedite a conclusion to this standoff as soon as possible. If he thinks the only way to stop the PPA and SDC from going to war is the deaths of thousands, he'll open fire himself. He's one of those types of Spectres."

"Understood, sir," Shepard replied, his tone grim.

"Remember, while Saren is a problem, Fettel is your objective." Hackett shook his head. "Secure Fettel, and find whoever - or _whatever_ \- backed this attack, and we can end this blockade and get Saren off this planet before he does something drastic."

"Yes sir."

"Good luck, Shepard."

* * *

Alison and Garrus stood on a walkway overlooking one of Xin Hengsha's commercial districts, long lines of small shops and retail kiosks lining the corridor below them. It wasn't too dissimilar from what one saw in the Citadel or other space station commercial areas, save for the opposite wall. A long wall section stretching the entire commercial district was a holographic projection which showed a real-time view of the ocean outside, the subdued towers of the colony and their interconnected latticeworks of support beams and connection tubes lit in a number of soft blue and yellows. Millions of fish flowed in massive schools, currents of silver scales reflecting the lights of the towers. A stretching line of tables, benches, and transplanted greenery lined the hologram wall, letting people enjoy the sight of the sea while still safely behind dozens of meters of habitat hull.

The human and turian were leaning on the walkway overlooking the shops, their postures idle even while they trawled the local networks, hunting for information regarding Paxton Fettel. Exact data on him was hard to come by, but Alison was well connected. So much so that Garrus often wondered why she'd bothered hiring him into Hoplite, as he was sure there were far more capable people she could team up with. But at least he didn't need to know why they did what they did. For the last year they had run from one crisis zone to another across the galaxy, engaging in legally-shady activity that inevitably led to defusing one bad situation or another.

He didn't have any real qualms with being paid to solve crises; half the time he was asked to put a bullet in people whose dossiers involved words like "murder," "sapient-trafficking," or "war crimes." The kind of people he'd either busted or was forced to watch get away back when he was C-Sec. But sometimes… Sometimes Garrus asked himself who was backing them, giving them the intel and money to shoot trouble in the face. It felt almost like they were working for a Spectre.

"Hey," Garrus suddenly said as he finally spotted something on his feeds. "I found Fettel."

Alison looked up at Garrus as he spoke, and her expression shifted quickly between surprise, disbelief, anger, and finally annoyance.

"You… I've been following hundreds of… how?"

Garrus brought up a picture that one of Alison's many contacts had sent them: a human male in his early twenties, pale-skinned, lean-faced, and with black hair. It was an institutional shot, with the man wearing a dark gray hospital gown and with a sunken, dejected expression. At the bottom of the picture was the name PAXTON FETTEL followed by a series of ID numbers and letters. According to their contacts it was several years old, but suitable for facial-recognition.

Garrus was curious, but not terribly so, on how they'd gotten the image.

"So, our… suspect? Target? What do we call these guys? You never made that clear."

"Individual of interest."

"That takes too long to say."

"How. Did. You find him?"

Garrus chuckled at her annoyance, and nodded.

"Fettel's been a lab experiment for a significant part of his life, going by what Disler implied," the Exo continued. "We can safely assume that he was a valuable test subject, so his life has been tightly controlled. This likely includes a very strictly controlled diet, probably calculated down to the last calorie and vitamin."

"Yes, that makes sense," Alison said, and cocked her head to the side in realization. "Oh. _Oh."_

"Right. Psionics require a high calorie intake, scaling up based on how powerful they are and how much they're using. Fettel's supposed to have been juiced with Gollop devices, so his powers will be… pretty damned powerful. In other words, he's going to be _hungry_."

"You staked out the food courts," Alison said, shaking her head. "Okay, that was a better idea than blanket data trawling."

"Years and years as a detective," Garrus replied with a shrug. "I imagine that if I were locked in a lab for years, forced to eat carefully-prepared food day in and out, if I escaped and got hungry, the first thing I would do would be… eat three double beef-imitate cheeseburgers with two orders of fries and three extra large soft drinks in Hengsha Mall East's food court."

"He's still there?" she asked, standing up straight, a hand sliding across her jacket's waist the check her sidearm.

"Starting on his third burger," Garrus replied. "Surprisingly impeccable table manners. I wonder where he got the money to buy that much beef-imitate."

"Likely pulled someone's account numbers," Alison said as they started down the walkway, plotting a path to the food court on her AR. "Mentals can yank account information when someone accesses their data. Pull surface thoughts about passwords, account information, and so on, and break in even if the account is heavily secured."

"Sounds so... low tech," Garrus mused as he followed her. They both slung duffels holding their heavier weapons and trotted along the walkway.

"Low tech works fine when augmented by mind-reading," she replied. "Okay, we're not going to act when we find him, just tail him."

"You sure?"

"We need to know who is backing him, and he's got to meet with them at some point. There's no way he's getting off this colony without help, not with that blockade."

"We have to be careful," Garrus said. "You nearly got your metal caved in by a cyborg. A high-tier psionic will be problematic for the two of us."

"Hell of an understatement," Alison replied. "I think its time we went more overt. XCOM's got the manpower and equipment."

"XCOM?" Garrus said. "You certain?"

"We start a fight with Fettel, _we _lose," she replied. "I have contacts in XCOM, and we'll likely need their firepower."

"Heh. I won't object to having more guns on our side."

* * *

Saren-Vanis was waiting for Shepard on the Hengsha docks - or more specifically, on a secured landing pad at the top level. His shuttle was a long, heavy craft that matched the turians' winged and bladed aesthetic. The turian himself was apparently content to coordinate from within his ship, but descended from the ramp as Shepard and his squad approached, led by Nyreen. The turian Spectre was tall and lean, even for one of their raptor-like species. His skin was pale, bare of any clan or tribal markings, and he wore a set of dark gray armor, with the same glowing blue lines that Nyreen wore. Shepard had checked that design, and found it was a modified turian variant intended to support biotic amps, which meant this Saren was also a biotic. His eyes gleamed a pale, bright blue, indicating augmentations, and Shepard guessed he had plenty more physical mods hidden under his cartilage skin.

Sitting by the shuttle's ramp, resting on its hindquarters, was Saren-Kiris, and in the light of the docking bay Shepard could see the quadruped Exo was painted matte black, save for its head, where the stylized, angular eyes, mouth, and nostrils shone with a dark blue. The shoulder cannons were retracted, making Saren-Kiris look like an oversized, distorted metal bear with a malformed turian head.

"Sentinel Shepard," the organic turian spoke, his flanged voice making Shepard immediately think of cast iron.

"Spectre Arterius," Shepard replied. He glanced to the Exo, which was still dripping a bit from his fruitless hunt through the colony's water systems.

"I understand you have already met Kiris," the Spectre said.

"I spent most of the time arguing with him, actually," Shepard said, and Saren's mandibles spread apart for a moment before clicking against his lower jaw.

"Yes, he tends to have honed the more aggressive components of my core personality," the turian said. "It is usually more of an asset in dangerous scenarios."

"We were facing a potential A-tier human psychic who proclaimed intent for large-scale murder," Saren-Kiris rumbled. "Decisive aggression was the correct decision in that scenario."

"We will debrief when Corsiv returns," Saren-Vanis said, and turned back toward Shepard. "Sentinel, time is short and war is potentially about to erupt at any moment. I have read your reports on the hidden SDC lab and Paxton Fettel."

"Then you know that XCOM has marked Fettel as our priority," Shepard said, and glanced to Saren-Kiris. "Alive."

**"A transitionary concept among many species,"** Saren-Kiris replied.

"We don't know if he has a cortical stack installed," Shepard said. "Until we do, we take him alive."

**"...reasonable."**

"Fettel is not necessary," Saren-Vanis cut in. "Armacham created him, so I shall focus upon them. Their headquarters on Proteus is located in Westwater, the main PPA colony. Marshal Disler will have been restored from backup by now. If Fettel wanted his knowledge, so do I."

"You don't have that authority," Shepard said.

And technically, it was true. Spectre legal authority was limited in human territory, and they had to get approval from local authorities to perform most actions. But legal limitations could be bent, especially when one had the kind of power and connections that a Spectre commanded. Having a direct line to the three most powerful sapients in the galaxy gave one tremendous amounts of soft power. More than one human administrator who had barred a Spectre's investigation had abruptly found themselves replaced by someone more willing to cooperate, or receiving a call from their immediate superiors ordering them to play by the Spectre's rules.

"I've been told that _before_, Sentinel," Saren replied, and Kiris let out a low, mechanical chuckle.

"ATC has sanitizing procedures in place," Shepard said. "Anyone dealing in shady activities tends to. Disler's backup would likely have any incriminating evidence edited out of his memories just in case something like this happened."

"True enough," Saren said after a few moments. "And physical evidence of their activities is in short supply."

"Excepting Fettel," Shepard said. Saren nodded, thinking on that for a few moments.

"I will send Corsiv to investigate the Armacham headquarters regardless," the turian said. "He will be far less likely to trigger emergency sanitizing. In the meantime, we will follow your advice and hunt Fettel."

"Right," Shepard said with a nod, hiding his relief that Saren wasn't likely to go storming the ATC headquarters. "Going by what he said, we assume Fettel has been influenced by some unidentified alien intelligence operating through an unsecured Gollop machine. He's unstable, likely not thinking rationally, even without the possibility of being influenced from outside intelligences."

"And that is why we're under your "bloody clown" protocols," Saren said, Shepard nodded, not bothering to correct him.

A marker appeared on Shepard's AR display, and he glanced behind him at the two figures it indicated were approaching.

Walking toward the landing pad were Alma Wade and James Vega, the former wearing her PsiCorps armor and cloak and the latter in his heavy tactical armor. Alma kept a hand on James' shoulder, but otherwise seemed to be normal. Flanking them were half a dozen Hengsha policemen in tactical gear.

"Ah, I see," Saren said, noticing the pair approaching. "You would turn a tactical liability into an advantage." Shepard glanced back toward the turian, who shrugged. "I reviewed the recordings of the initial attack, and am aware of Lieutenant Wade's psionic ratings and her near uselessness in a combat situation. But her sensory capabilities…."

"She can sweep the entire colony, which was her original mission, before we got sidetracked," Shepard said, while at the same time having his muse make a note that XCOM needed to check again for STG infiltration. XCOM didn't share the specifics of its A-rated psionic personnel with the Citadel. He turned back toward the pair and their escort as they stepped onto the platform, and walked toward them.

"Lieutenants Wade, Vega," he said with a nod. "Good to see you back down here. Did you get some rest?"

"Yes sir," Alma replied. Her glowing eyes flicked past him, toward the pair of Sarens. Kiris stood up off his haunches, peering at Vega, who matched his stare, girth, and armament. Shepard received a ping from Alma, and answered the call.

_Sir, is that Saren Arterius?_ she asked.

_Yeah,_ Shepard replied. He saw her frown. _Something wrong?_

_No, sir,_ she replied, and shook her head. _It's just… Major. Uh. Well, sir…._

_Go ahead, Lieutenant,_ Shepard replied, concerned. He glanced back to Saren-Vanis, who was doing something with his omnitool.

_Surface thoughts. He's… a bit of an asshole, sir._

_Oh,_ Shepard replied, and shrugged. Yeah, that made sense. _I figured that out earlier, but thanks for the heads up._

Shepard turned back toward Saren-Vanis, and noticed that Kiris was circling around Vega, who kept an eye on the quadruped Exo. The Exo finally stopped, bobbed his head, and made a respectful hum. Vega mimicked the motion.

"I'll take my team and begin a sweep of the colony," Shepard said, and Saren looked back up from his omnitool. "We'll do a sweep, hab by hab, using Lieutenant Wade's powers, and Hengsha police will lock down-"

There was a ping on Shepard's comms from his muse, and a high-priority indicator flashed by on his AR.

"Hold on, incoming from the Admiral," Shepard said, holding up a hand and opening the channel. _Admiral Hackett, sir?_

_Major, we've found Fettel,_ Hackett messaged, blunt and straightforward. _Approximate location at least._

_Oh. Well. _ Shepard's lip quirked in annoyance. He'd been waiting for Alma to come down to start the search, but now…. _How did we find him?_

_Some unofficial Intelligence assets,_ Hackett replied. _They tracked him to a commercial district using some… complex behavioral predictions and suspicious banking activity._

_Understood,_ Shepard replied, pinging the rest of his squad, including Alma and James. Garm's absence was painfully obvious at that moment. _I've got my team on the way now._

_I've got our Intelligence liaison coordinating. They'll feed you the data and a comms frequency with our assets._

_Understood,_ Shepard repeated. He looked up to his team and the Sarens.

"Intel has Fettel spotted," he said. "We're moving. Saren, you care to join us?"

"Of course," the turian said, his tone eager, and Kiris rose off his haunched, humming in anticipation.

* * *

Hengsha Mall East's food court was generic as such places went: a small open-air (relatively, considering the colony was underwater) plaza with a dozen tables, flanked on two sides by various food vendors and hallways past them leading into a larger shopping district. The other two sides looked out over another concourse and the holographic walls projecting the ocean beyond the habitat. The scents of a dozen vendors' worth of cooking filled the air - seafood, meat-imitate, fruits, vegetables, breads, and noodles - and the space over the vendors and shops featured a riot of holographic and LED advertisements.

Garrus and Alison had positioned themselves on opposite sides of the food court, Garrus at the edge of the plaza where he was sipping yet another a slushie while playing a mindless mesh browser game on his omnitool. Allison was leaning on a walkway on the far side, overlooking the plaza, pretending to watch the ocean projection on the wall. Both had a handful of microdrones flitting around the plaza, including one actually perched on a chair just behind Paxton Fettel's table.

Fettel wore a generic civilian jumpsuit, with a breather helmet at his side, designed to go airtight in case of a water breach. Over it he wore a red-and-black leather jacket. As Garrus had reported, he was busy eating a plate of beef-imitate cheeseburgers with calm, controlled efficiency, although Garrus could see restrained eagerness in how he grabbed burger, fries, and soft drinks.

_I could just shoot him now, end all this,_ Garrus suggested. _I have a suppressed weapon, and XCOM will cover us._

_Not until we have his backers,_ Alison replied.

_But he'd die happy. Eating artery-clogging meat and cheese, peaceful, content. Two shots into the head, he'll never know._

_No, Garrus._

He was joking of course. He'd carried out assassinations before, and Fettel was a murderer by proxy, as far as they knew. Garrus wouldn't have any qualms with killing Fettel where he sat right now, but he knew they had a larger mission.

A new ping touched his comms as he sat there, and a set of new markers appeared on Garrus' primary AR, approaching from one end of the mall area. He counted eight contacts, moving in a couple of groups.

_This is Major Shepard, XCOM Sentinel. I'm with Spectre Saren Arterius. Our team is moving into position._

_Copy, Sentinel, this is Agent Tam,_ Alison replied. _My team is observing the individual of interest right now. _

As soon as she sent that, Alison pinged Garrus on their private channel.

_Holy shit that marker really is Saren. Looks like Vanis and Kiris._

_Well, at least we have the firepower advantage, right? _Garrus sent back, even as he started doublechecking cover and exits.

_Sentinel Shepard, Spectre Arterius, be advised,_ Alison sent, _Our agents are using cyberbrains. Fettel does not appear to have detected us. Advise you keep your team's distance while we observe._

_Understood,_ Shepard replied. A second message came through, and Garrus could sense the irritation attached to it.

_My team will remain on standby,_ Saren messaged. _We will prepare to intervene if the situation becomes violent._

Garrus could detect the naked anticipation in those words.

A couple of minutes passed, and Garrus saw Shepard and Saren's respective teams move into a storage area behind one of the vendors. Not close enough to immediately intervene, but they could be in the plaza in about twenty seconds if things went hot. He could also pick out a few marked Hengsha police moving around the outskirts of the mall area. Garrus didn't like how loose and ineffective the perimeter was, but they were setting up for observation and tailing, not containment and arrest.

Garrus counted at least thirty civilians in the food court, mostly human but a few turians and hanar as well. If things went hot, a lot of innocents would be caught in the crossfire. Judging by Saren's reputation, that wouldn't matter much to him. At least no one sat close to Fettel

_Sir, I have something,_ a new ID sent across the channel. The tag on the name identified it as a Lieutenant Wade with XCOM. _A mind on intercept toward Fettel's position. Organic brain, about twenty meters away, north. Getting weird echoes off his brain patterns._

_Same as the one we captured at the docks? _Shepard asked.

_No, Sir. This one is human. Just firing odd signals._

_Possibly bio-augs, _Saren sent. _Mental augmentations can result in unusual mental signatures. It is common with asari augments._

_I think I can see him,_ Alison sent. _Feeding it to you._

If it weren't for Lieutenant Wade's alert, Garrus probably would have missed the human walking into the plaza. He wore a standard, pale brown civilian pressure suit and jacket, had short, dull brown hair and no distinctive features or markings. He walked at a sedate, unhurried pace across the plaza and food court, approached Fettel's table, and sat down in a chair across from the psychic.

"You took your time contacting us," the bland-featured man said without preamble.

"Matters required attending," Fettel replied. "Though I am curious as to why you are willing to meet me so openly," the psychic continued as he finished his last burger. "This is a very public location."

"This is Xin Hengsha," the nondescript man replied. "We are always being watched. The key is to remain unremarkable so no one will care enough to be observing your actions."

"I do not have the time or luxury to be unremarkable," Fettel replied.

"Nor do you have the other two minds," the contact said. "Our agreement stipulated they would receive those bodies in order to deliver the egos to us. It was a significant effort to acquire cover bodies for them and put them in place for an ego transfer."

"Circumstances demanded sacrifice," Fettel said, leaning back in his chair. He picked up the only remaining drink and sipped it. "We both knew your enterprise would draw attention to this colony. And I was not the one who spent Allmon on a botched assassination attempt on an XCOM A-rank psychic."

The bland man scowled slightly, eyes flicking back and forth to the tables around them. No one was in easy earshot, Garrus guessed, but openly talking about murder plots wasn't likely to sit well with him.

"Matzirov was not sacrificed for the greater objective," the nondescript figure muttered. "We have been observing-"

"Matzirov died for _my _reasons," Fettel growled, setting down his drink. He then abruptly stood up. He started walking away from the table, and the contact stood just as quickly, following him.

_Track him,_ Garrus sent to Alison. _Fettel's on the move._

_I have him,_ Alison replied.

They weaved their way between tables, the two men going silent for several seconds, until they passed the thin crowds and moved past the vendors lining the edges of the court. They moved down a side corridor, empty of any immediate civilian presence, and stepped through an employee-only doorway. Alison maneuvered her microdrone to keep tailing them.

"Do you have a way past the blockade?" Fettel abruptly said, turning to face the contact as soon as they were in the corridor beyond.

"Yes, an atmospheric transport," the contact said. "Stationed at the main docks."

"They would let you fly an aircraft with the blockade ongoing?"

"Surface to orbit transit is blockaded, but in-atmosphere flights are tracked closely, not grounded," the contact replied. "Once we arrive at our destination, we will be able to leave the atmosphere safely. But with far less than we had hoped for."

"You and I both know_ I_ am the only one that matters," Fettel snarled. "Which ship? What is the destination?"

"No."

"What?" Fettel raised an eyebrow as the bland-face contact crossed his arms.

"You are an unruly child, Fettel," he said. "We question whether you are truly suitable for our purposes, or just another brash fool drunk on your own power."

"Hm. I see," Fettel replied, and a smile cut across his narrow features. "You would leave me here? After the effort you put into liberating me?"

"Yes," the contact replied. "Our deal was for you and two other egos with the Gift. It was our prerogative to risk Allmon. It was not yours to destroy Matzirov pursuing your own agenda, and we are not going to risk exposure for someone as unstable as you."

_Shit. I see where this is going,_ Alison messaged. _Shepard, move in!_

_Copy!_ Shepard replied. The markers indicating Shepard and Saren's teams began to move from their hiding places.

"Unfortunate," Fettel said. "However, there is a matter, I wager, that you have overlooked."

Reddish-purple light flashed, and Fettel's hand lance dup and grabbed the contact's skull. The bland features shifted to surprise, and rapidly shifted to horror as psionic power surged through his skull.

"Your brain is organic," Fettel hissed, and a strangled cry escaped the contact's throat as he shook, limbs and arms spasming violently. A couple of seconds passed, and the contact sank to his knees, psionic energy raging around his skull and back up Fettel's arm's. Blood began to emerge from his eyes and ears, then the nose and mouth, followed by wisps of smoke.

Then the light faded, and Fettel released them man, letting him slump to the floor in a slowly-expanding pool of blood.

"Not much time now," the psychic muttered to himself, and stepped back through the employee door.

_Shepard, you get that?_ Alison messaged.

_I did. Everyone stand down. _

_What?_ Garrus sent as the team markers abruptly halted..

_Shepard wants us to track him,_ Alison sent to him over their private channel. A heartbeat later Shepard's message arrived.

_Track him. He's already burned the contact and ripped the knowledge he needs from his mind. Fettel's got to be headed for the docks. Tail him, see what ship he takes. _There was a pause. _Whoever is behind this has a way off the planet._ _He'll lead us right to them, and going by what we've seen from him so far, he'll be as hostile to them as he is to us._

_A good plan,_ Saren messaged. _Rendezvous at the docks. If he beats us there, we can have Hengsha Port Authority delay his departure until we're ready to pursue him._

_Understood,_ Alison sent, standing up from their spot, slinging her duffel, and hurrying along the walkway along a preset path to the docks. Garrus did the same from his side of the mall. _We'll meet you there._

_What about the man he just killed? _Garrus asked Alison as they strode as fast as they could without drawing attention to themselves.

_Hengsha police will pick his body up,_ she replied. _Nothing we can do about it now anyway. Remember why we're here, Garrus._

_Yes, I know,_ Garrus replied, his message carrying irritation and a bit of anger. _But he just murdered someone in cold blood, on top of everything else we've seen him do. Fettel's a psychopath and we need to bring him down._

_I know, Garrus._

_I'm not going to pretend we're cops, Al,_ he sent. _But we are spies, and I know how this works. Psychopaths like him can get a free pass because they're useful to _someone_. We're not letting that happen._

_Once we've got his backers,_ she assured him, _he's going into a cage or a box. We can't let a psionic as crazy as Fettel run loose._

_Good. That's all I need._

_Your sense of morals and justice might be a pain in the ass to certain people, Garrus,_ she sent, and then smiled. _But not to me._

* * *

"This human has the worst fieldcraft I have ever seen," Saren remarked as they watched Paxton Fettel simply walk into the Hengsha docking dome without bothering to hide his presence.

"He's spent most of his life in a lab," Shepard remarked as Fettel entered an elevator, rode the lift up a dozen levels, and immediately walked toward a light atmospheric skimmer. It was a lean, snob-nosed raft, about twice the size of a common aircar, painted a generic gray. He ignited his omnitool as he approached, waved it over the pilot's door, and it opened.

"Remarkable lack of security," Nyreen commented. "Either that or he ripped access codes and protocols from his contact's head before he died."

The two teams were waiting inside their respective craft, Shepard's squad fully kitted out, with Alma and James accompanying them, waiting in their Voidranger. Both of the Sarens as well as Nyreen were aboard their own shuttle. They watched on the multitude of cameras scattered around the hangar as Fettel started the preflight sequence.

"Sentinel Shepard?" called a woman's voice from the Voidranger's loading ramp. He looked up from his AR to see a human woman in her apparent early twenties with delicate features and braided brown hair. Standing next to her was a turian Exo with his chassis painted a dull gray, augmented by bright blue slashes across his face and mandibles. They were both wearing civilian clothing, but they also bore heavy duffelbags that Shepard was entirely certain held all manner of military options.

"I'm Agent Tam," the woman said, extending a hand. Shepard shook it. "This is Agent Brutus." The turian shook Shepard's hand in turn.

"You Intelligence?" Shepard asked. Tam shrugged, and Shepard received authorization codes matching those he had received from Hackett's Intelligence liaison.

"We have Intelligence connections and have authorization from our superiors to assist your team in apprehending Paxton Fettel and whoever is assisting him," she said, the words standard, dull, and canned. Shepard nodded at that.

"Welcome to the team," he said, and stepped back inside as they boarded. He checked on Fettel again, to see that he was still preparing to lift off. Shepard then switched channels, opening up his command line with Admiral Hackett.

_Sir, estimate three minutes until he's ready to lift,_ Shepard sent.

_Understood, Major,_ Hackett replied. _SDC's cleared us to put our frigates into orbit and let us tap into the air traffic sensor network so we can follow him. I've got two full companies of infantry ready on our Voidrangers and a dozen smashdown launchers loaded with FENRIS and HULU drones. Give us a target and I can have those drones on-site in less than two minutes and the infantry on the ground in ten._

Shepard let out a relieved breath at that. Hackett was putting a lot of firepower at the ready to deploy.

_I hope we won't need them, sir,_ he replied.

_God, I hope not,_ Hackett replied. _If we're lucky its just a small ship parked on some rock poking above the ocean and you can take them down with just your squad. But if not, don't hesitate to call down the rain. Every soldier in this fleet is standing by, and a few coded orders will get SDC and PPA's naval assets down there as well._

_Thank you, sir._

_Good hunting, Major._

Shepard looked up from his data feeds, and saw Agents Tam and Brutus arming up, the former fitting tactical armor over her civilian jumpsuit while the latter was prepping a set of weapons: laser submachineguns, a kinetic marksman carbine, a fusion rifle, several pistols of different types. These "unofficial" Intelligence agents were armed for Muton.

He glanced across the other side of the dropship, and saw McTavish and his squad similarly doublechecking their gear, while Alma was sitting in her crash seat, eyes closed and face drawn tight from concentration. James was sitting on the floor next to her, securing himself to the deck with cargo straps. He grunted an acknowledgement when Shepard met his eyes.

Without Garm, though, things felt empty.

"Fettel is lifting," Nyreen suddenly reported, and Shepard sent a nonverbal prep-to-lift order to the team. Everyone not secured strapped themselves in - Agent Tam paused to adjust the fit of her armor before complying - and the loading ramp began to close.

"Hengsha Port Authority has cleared Fettel's aircraft to launch," Nyreen continued. Shepard could see the small aircraft ascending up through the center of the docks, moving on tower-directed autopilot, and rose up toward the top of the dome. The doors overhead slid open, and a burst of rainwater slashed through the doors in the few seconds it took Fettel's craft to pass through.

"Sensor data coming down from orbit and from Hengsha air traffic," Nyreen continued. "They have him locked in."

"Wait five minutes to let him get ahead of us, then we launch," Shepard ordered, and his team nodded. "Keep our distance and keep sensor masking on at all times. I don't want him to know we're in pursuit until we land on his head."

* * *

Twenty minutes later, the Voidranger and Saren's shuttle were swooping northeast, over the northern hemisphere of Proteus. Fettel was several hundred kilometers ahead, course never wavering as he stuck to a east-northeastern course. Nyreen suggested he was likely using autopilot, and Shepard and Agent Tam concurred.

If his path was accurate, he was heading toward a thin archipelago of islands a little past Proteus' Arctic Circle, one of the small percentage of the planet's surface area that wasn't ocean. There wasn't much built up in that area; the islands were not strategically valuable, and the only facilities built there were an atmospheric craft refueling station and a large climate monitoring facility. The former was the most likely location of any ship. Shepard opened a line to Hackett.

_Admiral, has there been any contact with the teams operating either base on these islands?_

_Negative, Major,_ Hackett said after a few seconds._Stand by a moment._

Several more moments passed, the two dropships continuing along their path, passing through a wall of stormclouds.

_Shepard, those facilities are in the vicinity of a radiation anomaly we detected about ten hours ago. It looked like someone detonated a Durand-Vahlen transition drive in atmosphere near the North Pole._

Shepard thought on that one for a few seconds.

_You think someone tried to fire off a wormhole inside a gravity well?_

_Possibly,_ Hackett replied. _Maybe someone tried to sneak a ship in past the blockade with an atmospheric wormhole jump, and the predictable happened. If so, Fettel's going to a dead end._

_If it were always that easy,_ Shepard sent back.

_Keep your eyes open down there, Shepard. And end this._

_Yes sir._

The minutes passed, the team sitting in anxious silence. McTavish and his squad were making quiet jokes, while Tam and Brutus were silent, probably conversing via a private channel.

Then, two minutes out, the Voidranger's pilot messaged them all and sent a data feed from the dropship's sensors. they were closing with the islands, and Fettel's craft was heading toward the climate station on the largest island. Shepard looked over the feeds, which were being partially disrupted by the storm, and checked with Saren's team to make sure they were getting something similar. Geographic and oceanic data were coming back, and they had a good look at the island that matched the most recent planetary scans.

Fettel's aircraft began to descend, ignoring the storm and the crashing waves.

Something moved beneath the waves. Thermal blooms appeared on the scanners, followed by radiation markers consistent with elerium-based power sources. Water rose, and then broke, and an enormous shape began to rise out of the depths.

Sensors confirmed length: half a kilometer. Spectrographic sensors returned elemental composition: a variant of vahlenite. Radiation markers screamed that the craft was definitely using massive elerium power sources, comparable to human carriers.

Visual scanners confirmed its shape: an elongated craft, dozens of small engines helping push it up out of the sea, with a deadly, familiar profile.

Alma reached up, putting a hand to her forehead, and shepard turned toward her. He didn't ask, and she didn't need to hear his question. She shook her head slowly, and faintly, Shepard could feel a pressure against the back of his skull, a distant throbbing. An awareness, not actively probing against him, but apparent by its mere psionic presence.

"Never felt anything like this," Alma murmured. "But… Major. Its _them._"

Shepard nodded, switching to his command channel.

_Admiral, this is Major Shepard,_ he sent. _CASE CHIMERA SUNRISE. Repeat, CASE CHIMERA SUNRISE._

He swallowed. Nearly two centuries had passed since they'd last seen a ship like that.

_Ethereal battleship detected in-atmosphere._


	12. Ten: Operation CHARRED STEEL Part One

**PRIORITY ONE HYPERWAVE TRANSMISSION: PRIORITY ALPHA CHANNEL**

**TIMESTAMP: 19:41 HOURS ZULU STANDARD TIME, 14/9/2183**

**FROM: XCOM STRIKE FOUR COMMAND CARRIER_ XCS HONJO MASAMUNE_**

**TO: ALL PPA, EU, SDC, SAF, RA, JRA, ALLIED EARTH COUNCIL, AND XCOM FACILITIES**

**SUBJECT: CASE CHIMERA SUNRISE - HOSTILE ETHEREAL PRESENCE CONFIRMED**

As of September 14, 2183, XCOM Sentinel assets, supported by Citadel Council Spectre agents, investigating unauthorized psionic activity on the colony world of Proteus in the Athens System have CONFIRMED presence of an Ethereal Type-002 Battleship inside the planet's atmosphere. XCOM Sentinel assets and supporting Intelligence and Spectre agents have engaged Ethereal combat units.

As of 19:40 Hours, XCOM Rear Admiral Steven Hackett has issued a local **CASE CHIMERA SUNRISE** alert and assumed direct command of all active military assets in the Athens System until Ethereal presence has been neutralized.

All allied forces receiving this message are to go to immediate alert and are requested to provide immediate aid.

* * *

**_Chapter Ten: Operation CHARRED STEEL_**

* * *

This was exactly what Admiral Hackett had been waiting for, and praying he would never see.

"Comms," he barked. "Open channel to all military and government receivers in-system. Priority Alpha. CCS emergency code."

He wanted to make sure they didn't have a choice but to listen to this. They couldn't afford not to.

"This is Rear Admiral Steven Hackett, _XCS Honjo Masamune_, XCOM Strike Group Four," he said, voice clear and unwavering.

"I am issuing a localized CASE CHIMERA SUNRISE within the Athens System," he said. "XCOM Sentinels on Proteus have confirmed an Ethereal warship in-atmosphere. Data feeds from assets on the planet are being transmitted now. Per the authority granted to me in XCOM's charter and the International Galactic Security Treaty I am assuming direct control of _all_ SDC and PPA military assets in-system."

CASE CHIMERA SUNRISE protocols were straightforward, at least when they were locally-activated. In short, XCOM was in charge of everything with a gun and/or engine in the area, and anyone who disagreed could be charged with treason if it came down to it. That was also the reason why initiating CASE CHIMERA SUNRISE depended on absolute confirmation of Ethereal presence. No one wanted to give up control of their military or civilian assets without an extremely good reason. Nothing short of physical presence of Ethereals or their agents would do.

"All combat-capable ships in-system are to go on immediate combat alert," Hackett continued. "PPA ships are to prepare for search and secure operations covering the remaining planets in the system. Standby for specific orders. SDC ships maintaining blockade formations over Proteus are to begin immediate hyperwave scanning of the orbit. XCOM ships will move to Proteus orbit to prepare for supporting fire. All non-military spacecraft in system are to either dock with safe orbital facilities or exit the system. Surface and underwater facilities and population centers will go into immediate lockdown. As of this moment, the Athens System is under martial law."

He paced around the bridge, sending metnal deployment orders to his own fleet while his infomorph coordinators and comms officers scrambled to channel the sudden tidal wave of incoming and outgoing data.

"All ships are to release locks on fusion lance missile batteries, and slave those weapons to XCS Honjo Masamune's command for the duration of the alert. All SDC and PPA surface combat units are to prepare for immediate deployment on my command."

It was unlikely that they would be used, but Hackett wanted every soldier he could get his hands on and ready to move. The fact that each of those allied fleets had five times as many available marines as his single assault carrier possessed was an added benefit.

He specified the planetary grid square where the Ethereal battleship was sighted.

"Any ship in orbit capable of targeting these coordinates will lock them in immediately," he continued. "Prepare to fire all weapons. No one is to fire without my authorization or they are fired upon themselves."

He opened another channel as he finished issuing orders and the infomorph crews took over the specifics.

"Shepard," Hackett sent. "Your team is in the danger zone. Ship-to-ship ordnance is being prepared."

"Sir, I'm requesting permission to take my team in," Shepard replied immediately. "We need to capture Fettel and take that battleship."

"Shepard, that battleship has a crew of hundreds," Hackett said with a scowl that was only slightly disapproving. "Even with Saren's people, you're going to be terribly outnumbered and outgunned. Not to mention I'm ten seconds away from dropping every lance in orbit on that battleship. "

"Admiral, we need intel," Shepard replied. "We don't know anything about their objectives or purpose here, let alone their capabilities." He paused for a moment. "Lieutenant Wade says they haven't picked us up yet. I can take my team in, make a covert landing, and try to infiltrate the climate station and the battleship."

"Are you trying to pull another Slingshot, Shepard?" Hackett asked.

"Yes sir," Shepard admitted. Hackett frowned, considering for a moment.

The fact was, Shepard was right. They didn't know why the Ethereals were actually after human psychics, or what the aliens were really planning. Confirmation of their presence was simply putting down a thousand more questions. The fact that they had apparently done something to the brains of the humans linked to the Gollop machines that destroyed their minds when they were interrogated by XCOM proved the aliens were prepared to protect dangerous secrets. The obvious signs of long-term infiltration also hinted a much more dangerous agenda.

His gut told him to wipe the Ethereal ship out of the sky. But Hackett held his fire.

"Shepard, I'm prepping every smashdown launcher to drop as many drones as I can," Hackett said, while sending mental orders. "And I'm launching every FAFNIR and Voidranger I've got. Get in there and learn what you can, and recover whatever you can pull from their dead fingers."

"Yes sir."

Hackett released the channel, and looked back toward the holographic projections showing the planet, the surface area depicting the island and the Ethereal warship, and the larger system. The mission-planner algorithm had already coughed up a designation: Operation CHARRED STEEL.

How appropriately ominous.

* * *

The Voidranger was a silent riot.

There were few words exchanged as everyone doublechecked their gear, McTavish's team slapping or tugging on each others' webbing and secured hardpoints to make sure their arms and equipment. It was done in relative silence, a few spoken words and data transmissions.

But the minds underneath their helmets and skin and skulls were torrents of noises and images: anxiety, worry, concern, all coloring the more prevalent and forceful emotions. Confidence, eagerness, routines and maneuvers playing through their heads, unconscious twitches from their muscles corresponding with muscle memory and uploaded training data. An edge of hunger and anticipation. All honed by a century and more of preparation and tradition, of constant cultural osmosis. They were facing the _enemy_. Not pirates or raiders or Cabal scouts or terrorists.

Ethereals.

That fact made XCOM's soldiers almost giddy. Even James was anticipating what was coming. More than a century of uplifting had not wiped the ursine instincts from him, and the sapient thought patterns and images were mixed with the distinct textures and colors and sounds of his genetic forebears. A deep rumble in the ursine equivalent of the cerebellum, bestial instinct sliding alongside sapient intellect, mixing with weapons training and natural fury.

Every mind was unique. Not in the sense of fingerprints or genetic code. It was a composite, baseline differences from genetics that were immediately shaped by experience and memory and learning, a constantly changing and developing weave of neural connections and data transmissions. A human mind was a nation of instincts and logic and sensory data and experiences, creating a composite of dazzling complexity even while at rest.

Shepard was no exception, although he was more… controlled. His thoughts remained laser-focused on the task at hand, and his resistance shielded his mental activity. He issued orders and spoke with the pilot with sharp, professional clarity.

Dead silence came from the rear of the Voidranger, where the Intelligence agents were seated. There were residual flickers of neural activity from Tam, but it was literally only skin deep. Everything below that was pure machine. The same was true for the Exo Brutus. Whatever organic minds they once had were fully sealed in cyberbrains.

Alma closed her eyes and still her breathing and body, concentrating and running through mental exercises that prepared her to filter and control the constant waves of input from the people around her. It had taken years of training to be able to handle even the most fundamental of combat scenarios. She still remembered her reaction to a man dying of incineration and how it had left her comatose. She'd gotten better, but they were still heading into a situation where humans and otherwise were going to die. No matter how many times she had experienced it, the death of another person was a traumatizing experience.

"Wade," Shepard said, intruding into her meditation. She opened her eyes, looking toward him, and fought the urge to shy away. His gaze was sharp and penetrating, even when he wasn't trying to be intimidating or forceful.

"Sir?"

"How many are we dealing with down there?" Shepard asked.

She closed her eyes, concentrating. The alien presence was in the back of her mind, distinct in its shape and images. A low pulsing, intricate geometries of data, but the difference between them and human patterns was staggering. It was the same as identifying any species; the structure of a turian or asari or krogan or salarian mind was infinitely different from that of a human or any other species. They would often reach the same end results, similar thoughts and beliefs and methods of communication, but the manner in which the basic fundamentals of consciousness were assembled were so divergent that the structure and noise and chemical processes were instantly recognizable.

What lurked kilometers away, and growing steadily closer, could never be mistaken for human. The pressure, the data, was an unconscious pulse of raw power, the psionic energy touching her consciousness and carrying distinctive resonance of mental images and thoughts, all utterly alien. Concentration lent her focus, and she could pick out distinctive patterns in the Ethereals' thoughts, enough to start differentiating.

"Three Ethereals," she murmured. "Plus…" Other patterns, buried underneath the Ethereals'. barely detectable, except…. "Six other patterns. Alien. Nothing humanlike." Like candles next to fully-burning torches. "Sectoids, I think."

"What about Fettel?"

A burning mind, roiling in half human and half inhuman patterns. The Ethereals were humming sources of psionic power, deep wells of strength. Fettel was a rampaging storm, a cascading river of energy, as though his power was using him as a conduit. It lashed about, like a wild animal, leashed by his mind but hunting for something to assault and ruin.

"I see him," she said, grimacing. "Impossible not to. I think he's landed."

"Once they have him, they won't stick around," Shepard muttered. "Can you get us any further intel on enemy composition?"

"Not without pushing out with my own powers," Alma replied. "What I can sense is just passive detection, based on what they're putting out. If I started scanning, they would pick me up, like… like an active sensor sweep."

"Stealth is our priority right now," Shepard said with a shake of the head. "Hold back on that unless we need it." He leaned a bit closer. "Can you fight?"

She closed her eyes for a moment, concentrating and pushing the riot of incoming psychic data away, collecting her own thoughts. James' presence helped her focus, just as it had since she was a child. The familiar patterns of his thoughts, both human and animal instinct, were a metronome to lock upon.

"If I stay close to James, yes," she said, and the ursa uplift rumbled in agreement. When she opened her eyes, Shepard nodded.

"You two will be heavy support," he said. "Provide heavy weapons fire and mindfray support and recon on my orders."

"Yes sir," they both replied. Shepard turned toward the two Intelligence agents.

"Tam, Brutus," he said. "Your specializations?"

"Tactical mobility," Tam replied immediately. "Our bodies are optimized for quick redeployment and observation." She hefted a fusion rifle. "My mech frame is specialized for close assault. Brutus for ranged support."

"But this looks like a close-combat situation," Brutus added. "At least inside the climate station."

Alma brought up the mapping data and blueprints for the island and its attached station, and overlaid it with the sensor data. The island was about twenty or so kilometers across, but much of it was made up of a semi-active volcanic crater and sheer cliffs caused by constant erosion due to the planet's continuous storms. The climate station was built along the northern slope of the island, partially shielded from stormwinds by the mountains. Most of the machinery was stored in a series of buildings underneath a large metal dome about two hundred meters in diameter, which could retract during periods of calm to let the less durable equipment extend to gather data. A landing pad for supply ships was built just a hundred meters west of the climate station, and flat, octagonal supply bunkers lined the walkway between the climate dome and the landing pad.

The Ethereal battleship was hovering above the climate station, and sensors could pick up two craft roughly the size of their large scout ships having landed atop the supply sheds outside of the dome. Fettel's aircar was parked on the landing pad. It was hard to pick out movement in the raging downpour, but Alma's senses could easily detect Fettel's psychic presence, along with that of the other psionic aliens. Their precise locations were unclear, unless she began actively probing for them, but she guessed that Fettel was roughly inside the climate station, and one of the Ethereal presences was in proximity.

"Everyone, bring up your maps," Shepard ordered, opening a squad-wide channel. Alma also noted that Saren's team were connected by their icons appearing on her AR. Shepard highlighted a location about three hundred meters south of the climate station and its landing pad. The terrain was rough, mostly sheer cliffs, but there were flatter sections along the tops of the cliffs, at about the same elevation as the landing pad and climate station. On her AR, it was covered by a transparent blue circle and ten pips, each tagged with one of the XCOM soldiers' names.

"This is our LZ," he said, highlighting one of the flatter areas. "Voidranger will drop us here and retreat behind the cover of the island and wait for further orders. Teams are as follows: Sergeant McTavish's squad is designated callsign Alpha. Lieutenants Wade and Vega will be Bravo One and Two, Agents Tam and Brutus are Charlie One and Two. I am Alpha Actual. Saren?"

"We will follow our standing callsigns," Saren replied, and three pips of a slightly different color popped up on the map next to the XCOM team. Vanis, Kiris, and Kandros were marked.

"Okay," Shepard continued. "Teams will advance along the top of the cliffs under cover until we reach the climate facility. We will attempt to avoid engagement until we are as close to the facility as possible. Our primary objective is to neutralize Ethereal presence and capture Paxton Fettel. Secondary objectives are to acquire as much intelligence about the Ethereal forces as possible, seize enemy technology, and detain enemy combatants."

He began tracing paths along the cliffs and into the climate facility, highlighting locations and moving team indicators.

"Alpha, along with Saren's team, will move into the main facility. Bravo will remain in supporting positions. Charlie will provide overwatch. Lethal force authorized for Ethereal targets unless we have an opportunity for a live capture. Once we engage Fettel, Lieutenant Wade will attempt to subdue. Everyone else will engage him with nonlethal ordnance.

"While we're attacking the climate station, XCOM will be deploying smashdown packages, drones, and infantry on the battleship itself, with limited orbital strikes in support. Once the interior of the climate facility is cleared, we will attempt to assist them in taking the battleship. If it appears that we cannot secure the battleship, lance strikes will be deployed to blast it out of the sky. So be prepared for a light show. Questions?"

"Civilians?" Nyreen asked over the channel, and Shepard frowned for a moment, clearly accessing other feeds, and then shook his head.

"Unknown," he replied. "Climate station's internal mesh is offline, so we can't rely on it. Last employee reports indicate that there were a couple of caretakers working at the station. We can sweep or survivors or stacks after we're done securing the site. Any further questions?"

No one replied, beyond last-second securing of weapons and gear. The pulsing static of charged weapons hissed through the Voidranger's bay.

"Thirty seconds," the pilot reported across their comms.

She felt the shift in gravity and balance as the craft's engines as it descended. Anticipation rolled to the forefront, and Alma took a moment to still her thoughts, pushing the riot of emotion down and back, relegating it to background noise and focusing on her task. The engines fired again, and gravity changed once more, pulling her in a slightly different direction.

Shepard rose and stepped past her, helmet folding up around his head ad clicking in place. She sent the same command, and metal panels slid around her head, closing and locking in place. Her AR synched with her armor's computers and the brief darkness flashed away, giving her a full three-hundred-sixty degree view of her surroundings. The craft shook slightly as it touched down with gentle smoothness, and Shepard flipped the release.

The ramp hissed and then began to slide down, and the roar of thunder filled the Voidranger bay. Grey rain sheeted past, and the moan of stormwinds filled the aircraft. Outside was a dim, encompassing landmass of flat stone and dark shadows, covered by a roiling, overcast sky.

Shepard stepped down the ramp, precipitation slashing across his armor and the waterproof psi-cloak, plasma rifle leading, and advanced into the storm and the darkness beyond.

* * *

The rain hammered him as he strode toward the dome. Glowering eyes watched him behind camouflage, but he could pick them out regardless. They flanked the storage sheds leading into the main dome, and he was impressed at the degree of detail in their camouflage; it adapted to the pouring rain near-flawlessly, even hiding the impact of the water droplets on their bodies.

Their minds were sharp, focused, but they pulsed in patterns too similar to be natural. They were… akin to Replica. Clones, with minds trained via neural patterning. Their thoughts were alien, difficult to understand as little more than discordant noise.

Paxton Fettel considered touching one of them directly, ripping apart the optical camouflage to see what the species was underneath, but opted against it. he had no idea how his hosts would take such an action. Of course he had no intention of letting them leash him as Armacham did, but there was no reason to reveal that fact early.

The doors into the dome were a simple set of sliding panels in an archway, virtually Citadel standard, and slid open as he approached. He stepped through the doorway, the downpour cutting off abruptly, the aroma of ocean salt and wet rocks fading, replaced by the faint sharpness of ozone and industrial chemicals.

A quartet of low, flat, two-story buildings made of gray-white metal and ceramics stood under the partially transparent armorglass of the dome, each building housing the equipment that would extend when the dome opened. They were large enough to dominate most of the space inside the dome, set in a simple square with a walkway wide enough for several people to pass between each. Two more buildings stood at north end, one marked as a living area and the other housing the machinery that would rotate the dome's openings. Gray-white dominated the interior, although lettering in blue paint identified each building. The floor - gray ceramic industrial tiling - was wet with dozens of footprints tracking water around the interior. Some were shaped like human boots, but many more of the wet tracks were distorted and distinctly alien.

And Fettel could feel them, lurking around the dome. Distinct collections of different thought patterns and pulses, each mumbling or hissing an incomprehensible language of emotion and thoughts, yet each staying perfectly in time with its fellows. Save one pair, lurking on the top of the northernmost building, watching the entire dome; their emotions was not as different as the others, and he thought he could discern a familiar pattern in their thoughts.

Then a presence touched his mind, a distinct pressure that caused him to halt mid-step. Probing and pressing, questioning, curious and demanding all at once. He grit his teeth and continued walking, passing between the buildings flanking the entrance and approaching the intersection between the main structures.

As soon as he reached the intersection, the pressure relented, and a spike of warmth and electrical static danced over him. Fettel came to a halt again, and before him there was a brief instant where the world twisted and distorted, the air split apart by a flare of roiling purple energy. A distortion in space-time, a snap of displaced air, and then everything reverted to normal.

And an Ethereal loomed before him.

**_Welcome, New One._**

Fettel's knees shook, and he dropped to the floor under the pressure and power in the creature's psychic voice. It bore into his skull, resounding within his mind, and it took effort to raise his head to look up at the alien.

A tall, lean figure, wrapped in a dark blue robe with black trim, its head within a tall, flaring, silvery helmet of reflective metal that tapered to a narrow opening in the front. Its face was hidden in the shadows within, and it bore a mantle of black cloth across its narrow shoulders. The creature hovered a few meters away, arms hidden within the folds of the robe.

Towering on either side of it were a pair of massive brutes, weighing several times a normal human's mass, clad in enormous suits of blue powered armor with black trim, particularly around the enormous collars and shoulders, and wearing black and blue helmets that flared at the sides and rose in tall double points over their heads. They bore long, heavy plasma weapons, a sickly green glow emerging from the heavy cannons, which Fettel suspected were suitable for destroying buildings and shooting down aircraft, let alone slaughtering humans. The Ethereal's Muton Elite bodyguards, then.

_Y**ou have struggled long to reach us here. But at last you have arrived to join us.**_

The voice was powerful, resounding, but he pushed back, drawing his own will and power together defensively, warding off the sheer force of the psionic will. The Ethereal was a bonfire of raw power, its mere presence drowning out everything else, but he struggled to his feet, shielding himself from its influence.

_**Your power ebbs and surges, New One. Such potential, to be wasted by those with lesser ambition.**_

"I am… not their hound," Fettel growled out as he stood, and the Ethereal's presence receded, the raw pressure relaxing a fraction.

**_Indeed. And yet, our bounty is less than we had hoped for. Three we were promised and three we provided for. But neither the servant we sent, nor the other two we were promised, stand before us._**

"Necessary to bring us together," Fettel ground out, regaining his balance and standing tall, holding his own power against the Ethereal's sheer presence. "Fleets stand in orbit, and armies hunt us all on the surface. I was fortunate to make it here alone."

And soon, he would have a way off this planet and get his vengeance, even if he had to kill every alien on that battleship himself. Although now, before the enormous font of power that was this Ethereal, he started to question the wisdom of that improvised plot.

Its head tilted slightly as Fettel spoke. Then, the robes shifted, and one spindly, dark blue arm emerged, fingers open toward him. Purple coalesced around its fingertips.

**_Intriguing. The New One…._**

The pressure returned, only now an order of magnitude stronger. Fettel let out a gasp of surprise as he took a step backward, actual physical force driving against him. He brought his power together, psionic energy pouring through his body, and pushed back against the Ethereal's own enormous will.

**…_.attempts deception. Wonderful hubris. Not merely physically adept and mentally potent, but with ambition and drive. A dangerous trait, indeed._**

Fettel struggled against the power pressing against him, and slid backward and sideways. The Muton bodyguards glanced at each other, standing ready, but made no moves in the struggle between the psychics.

"I.. am not…. yours to control…" Fettel snarled through the raw force the alien was projecting. Red and purple light gathered before his body, eyes glowing with bloody illumination.

_**And yet, your power… it pulses in a manner most curious**,_ the Ethereal continued, ignoring Fettel's words. The pressure against Fettel's mind redoubled, spikes of awareness slicing into his thoughts, flashes of agony in his brain, as though it was driving needles through his skull.

**_Through the devices, the copies your kin forged, we awoke your potential, and yet the New One's power…_**

It started floating closer, the assault intensifying, the other three arms emerging and sheathed in purple illumination.

**_The New One's power is different._**

It loomed over Fettel, and he could see his reflection in the distortions of the helmet, tinged by red and purple fury.

**_Who else spoke to you, New One? Through the devices... who else altered your Gift? _**

His eyes widened at those words. What did it mean by that? The Gollop devices were only used by the Ethereals, weren't they?

And the pressure abruptly dropped, prompting a gasp of surprise from Fettel. The alien's presence in his mind vanished, and while he was still being driven backward by its psionic power, its attention had shifted away, the helmet turning toward the doorway into the dome.

**_The New One's kin approach, with deadly intent…. and with them comes another, untouched by our influence or any other's…._**

* * *

"Oh, shit."

They were moving through the downpour, spread out in a lose firing line, Brutus and Tam moving into an overwatch position. Shepard was leading, Saren's team on the left flank, the Intelligence team on the right, Alma and James at the rear. The rain was showing no signs of letting up, and the XCOM and Citadel team were a hundred meters shy of the landing pad. No signs of any Ethereal presence so far, though an entire army could be marching through this storm and they'd never spot them.

"Lieutenant Wade?" Shepard asked at her sudden exclamation over the tacnet.

"Major… Sir, I think they noticed me."

At that moment, contacts flashed on their sensors, and incoming plasma fire lit up the darkness.

_Contact,_ Shepard signaled across the tacnet, as unnecessary as it was, and the fireteams scattered, weapons rising and their onboard VIs tracking incoming fire to origin points. Wisps of steam rose where rain intersected the sickly green bolts flickering past - tighter and narrower than those from the reams of tactical footage from the first war with the Ethereals.

Team-wide scanning lit up the shooters' positions, marking three figures moving under some kind of sensor-masking ECM on the landing pad. The pad was elevated a couple of meters off the rocks and was bordered by a chest-high wall, and also housed some loading equipment, including a couple of car-sized drone loaders on treads. The shooters were crouched behind the low wall, popping up to fire quick bursts, but they weren't taking the time to aim properly. They probably couldn't see too well, considering the downpour.

_Vega, Kiris, suppress those shooters. Wade, go active, mark them on the tacnet as you spot them._ _Everyone else, advance._

The darkness lit up with sudden green and white light as Vega and Saren-Kiris started an impromptu firepower competition. The Exo and ursa uplift leveled their back-mounted squad-support guns and unloaded a torrent of plasma, particle beam, laser, and kinetic fire that washed over the wall, blinding and scorching in its intensity. The walls were deceptively durable, designed to handle all manner of vehicle-related accidents, but the shooters ceased fire immediately.

The mixed team of XCOM and Citadel troops charged under the cover of the heavy gunfire, advancing with the terrible speed and grace of a combination of military-grade "Olympian" gene-mods and Atlas powered armor's artificial muscles and computers. The Atlas suits themselves were a combination of advanced human, geth, and Citadel engineering married with the Citadel's love of adaptable, modular systems. Each soldier had custom-modded armor with attachments and loadouts suitable for their roles, although in this case McTavish had made sure his team were kitted for close-quarters battle: mass effect adherence pads on their gloves and boots, strength-assist frames, energized armor plating, and kinetic barrier modulators to help disperse incoming plasma.

_Alpha Actual, Bravo One. We are in overwatch position. Orders?_

Shepard saw Tam and Brutus' markers on the tacnet, having taken an elevated position with a direct line of fire on the doors into the dome and the walkway and storage sheds.

_Cover the doors. Interdict movement between the dome and the pad. _

They closed with the landing pad at a full dash, water flashing past them and covering fire ripping past to either side. He saw sudden markers appear on his AR display, question marks next to them, followed by another pair further back near the dome. Up close, he could see seven entities on the pad, three of them close to the wall and the rest in cover further back.

_Unknown contacts,_ Alma signaled. _Mental patterns indicate clones. Species further back unknown. Also clones, but different patterns from the group on the pad._

Shepard acknowledged and _slowed _as they approached within ten meters of the landing pad, and sent a squad-wide order while lifting his launcher forearm and triggering a flashbang microgrenade.

_Stunners over the top, blanket the pad, then up and over. Vega, Kiris, follow us in and shift fire to cover the door._

Half of Shepard's team raised their off hands, exposing the omnitool launchers on their gauntlets. Humanity had adopted that piece of adaptive technology with exceptional enthusiasm, and XCOM had taken to flash-fabricated munitions immediately. He could see both Kandros and Saren-Vanis launching their own wrist-mounted grenades over the top alongside the human munitions, and a moment later the night erupted in half a dozen blinding flashes and deafening roars, coupled with powerful ECM bursts designed to disrupt cameras. Most flashbangs were ineffective against anyone in properly-hardened and sealed armor, but the ECM could disrupt AI support and electronics for crucial seconds.

Then they went over the top in a volley of gene-enhanced, artificial-muscle-propelled leaps, Shepard in the lead thanks to the torrent of psionic energy flowing through him. He watched the metal and composite concrete of the landing pad track past him as he flew over it, his plasma rifle rising to his shoulder and ready to fire. As he crested the wall, Shepard saw the enemy up close.

He'd studied the old videos endlessly. The countless hours of combat footage XCOM and other militaries had acquired as they fought the Ethereal invaders had been a crucial component of his training. Even so, it took him a moment to realize what he was facing, despite their similar height, build, and stature.

Sectoids had not worn tactical armored hardsuits before.

They had the same body shape: frail and slender bodies with oversized heads, bipedal but crouching and moving on all fours. But they wore black and pale blue armor, lightweight vahlenite plating backed by what looked like artificial muscles. Reflective visors covered their eyes, and they were moving faster than the ones mankind had fought before, dodging and leaping backward with speed that was apparent even in Shepard's enhanced state.

And with the speed at which the plasma weapons mounted on their wrists were rising to burn him down, Shepard knew that the flashbangs had been completely ineffective.

Three were close to the wall, having taken cover under James and Saren's fire. The others were further back behind Fettel's aircar or the loading equipment, and every one of the little clone bastards was taking aim at him. He sighted the closest Sectoid, rifle blurring into position, and fired. The weapon kicked slightly against his shoulder as it generated and then propelled the searing bolt of green plasma, and he twisted in midair, shifting and sighting the next one. The first bolt had not flown a full meter when Shepard fired again, and he then turned to blast the third Sectoid by the wall. The next bolt erupted right as the first alien was struck in the middle of its thin, lightly-armored stalk of a neck.

Shepard watched in slow motion as the plasma boiled around the Sectoid's armored head, much of the plasma deforming and rippling around the neck, alternately charring and melting whatever it touched. the alien stopped in mid motion, and he heard a lot, drawn-out roar, which abruptly went silent as its legs went slack. The Sectoid toppled, head tumbling from its body as the plasma incinerated both armor and flesh.

The energy coursing through Shepard's body began to burn bright and hot, pain flashing through his temples, and he coiled his legs beneath him as he fell toward the rain-slicked landing pad. He released the raging energy, and reality snapped back to normal, his boots slamming to the pavement right as the other two Sectoids fell, glowing holes ripped in their armored chests, one keening faintly in a screeching warble of pain before it clattered to the ground.

Shepard rose, rifle up and hunting for his next target as the rest of the team landed all around him amid a storm of burning green hellfire.

* * *

"You find them yet?" Garrus asked as he peered down the rifle's smartlinked scope into the dome.

"No," Allison replied. The optics on her helmet were scanning the sheds flanking the dome entrance, searching the points that Lieutenant Wade had marked. Unfortunately, they were inexact; equating the precise geographic position of an individual with the psychic imprint was an inexact process, partially because of the flawed meatware that was translating the two. It was made an order of magnitude harder when the targets were under camouflage.

"Their camo is very advanced," Allison added.

"I'm wondering why they haven't started - there!"

A single narrow, brilliant beam of green suddenly speared across the climate station and struck an XCOM soldier as he landed on the pad, burning straight through his torso. The soldier dropped to one knee, and was grabbed by another trooper and yanked behind Fettel's aircar an instant before a second plasma beam would have cut through his helmet.

"Snipers," Alison said, highlighting the origin points for both beams.

Garrus' reply came in the form of two booming reports and two heavy armor-piercing kinetic rounds cutting through the downpour and striking both targets. The first shot sparked off the roof o the shed, but the second was accompanied by a spray of green liquid, and something leapt up and thrashed about, bouncing around in a whipping, sinuous motion.

"The hell?" Alison muttered tracking the figure as it dove off the top of the shed, a long, narrow creature the size of a human, but with a flexible, snake-like body and a quartet of whip-like, clawed appendages on its upper body wrapped around a long, gleaming plasma weapon.

"That's new," Garrus said, shifting and tracking it as Alison lit it with her scanners. Green liquid was fountaining from its side, but the wound was far from fatal, judging by how quickly it was moving toward the dome entrance. Garrus fired a second shot, winging the creature, and then they were scrambling up to their feet, activating their Hunter cloaking modules and vanishing from sensors.

_Alpha Actual, be advised, unidentified alien species detected. Serpentine in nature, appears to be operating in a sniper/infiltrator role. Uses active camouflage. We are relocating, you'll be without sniper support for twenty seconds._

They turned and began to move to another preset spot - or at least started to, before Alison kicked Garrus in the back and knocked him onto his stomach. It was an impressive feat, considering they were both cloaked.

An instant later the space Garrus was passing through was filled with a hound-sized shape of grabbing metal tentacles controlled by a vaguely squidlike mechanical body, a deep purple haze appearing around the machine as it deactivated its cloak. Anyone familiar with XCOM was also familiar with the basic design; HULU drones were, after all, based off the broken remains of Ethereal-built Seekers, and the machine that had just tried to seize Garrus was a near-exact match for the old weapons XCOM had fought nearly two centuries ago.

Alison snapped up her fusion rifle and fired into the Seeker's head point-blank. Blue-white plasma tore into the machine, melting through the metal skin and the complex electronics underneath, and the Seeker tumbled backwards and crashed to the ground in a heap of ruined metal and limp tentacles.

Garrus had rolled onto his back, looking up at her, but said nothing. Instead his own marksman rifle shot up and fired. A flash of an armor-piercing round punching through metal erupted next to her, and a metal tentacle flew past Alison's head, severed two-thirds of the way down. She twisted back and to her right, raising the fusion rifle to fire, but the second Seeker was on top of her, decloaking and its remaining limbs coiling around her.

Two seized her around the upper body, tightening over her neck and head, while the third grabbed her gun arm and pinned it to her side. The Seeker's limbs tightened, especially around the neck, as it tried to strangle and crush her.

_Seriously?_ Alison messaged in annoyance. It apparently didn't realize she wasn't organic and neither needed to breathe nor had internal organs to damage.

Garrus fired another shot into the Seeker's flank, punching through, and the machine let out a burst of data-laden static. Its tentacles slackened, and she snapped up her off hand and pushed hard. The Seeker's grip loosened, and she spun, slamming the machine down into the rock and stomping on it hard enough to deform the metal and send sparks flying. The Ethereal device went still.

"Should have seen those coming," Garrus mused. "But they're more dangerous to organics, I suppose." Alison nodded, hefting her fusion rifle, and turned.

"We need to relocate. The Seeker would have-"

A narrow green beam of plasma flashed past, burning straight through her right arm just above the elbow. A spray of sparks and the acrid aroma of burnt flesh filled the air, and her right arm fell free, glowing white-hot where the beam struck.

She crouched, grabbing her dropped fusion rifle with her left hand, even as Garrus spun and returned fire at the beam's origin point. Her features behind the helmet twisted in annoyance and she transmitted a release command to her right hand and it let go of the rifle. She was going to have to use kinetic stabilizers now, although fusion rifles weren't particularly precise weapons anyway so it wasn't that serious of a handicap.

Still, a whole arm. _Annoying_.

"Got him," Garrus said as they started moving again, under Hunter cloaks once more. "Or her. Or it. Not sure on the gender for those things."

"Confirmed kill?" Alison asked, patching into his rifle's scope feed. She checked data history and found video of Garrus hitting a second of the serpentlike snipers. As with its companion, the bullet punched through the cloaked creature, sending a spray of green liquid flying and forcing the creature to leap away in whipping, sinuous motions to reach safety before the Exo could finish it off.

"No, but I definitely informed its priorities," he replied.

She turned back toward the dome as they reached a new sniping position, Garrus crouching and readying his weapon while Alison scanned for more Seekers or other cloaked nastiness. Plasma and kinetic rounds were flying back and forth below; more of those new armored Sectoids were emerging from the sheds flanking the entrance to the dome, trading plasma with the XCOM team and Saren's turians. The Ethereal battleship loomed over the dome, apparently unconcerned with the battle raging below.

* * *

The dark, storm-wracked landscape was abruptly lit up by a barrage of streaking pillars of flame, intersecting with the top of the warship. Booming impacts sounded overhead as the smashdown containers impacted. Overhead, beyond the battleship, the clouds began to lit up as what looked like hundreds of stars began to push through the clouds, weaving and twisting and diving straight for the battleship. An entire carrier's worth of current-gen FAFNIR drones.

Panels opened on the battleship's top and flanks, glowing green lines visible on the lengths of the guns that emerged. Pillars of brilliant verdant fury flashed up into the sky, half a dozen at a time, intersecting the descending drones and blasting them out of the sky, but the FAFNIRs ignored the point-defense fire and descended, laser and plasma fire burning down in vicious retaliation.

The smashdown pod's shivered violently as it descended at near-terminal speeds toward the Ethereal battleship. Retrorockets were firing, exhaust wrapping the pod in fire and smoke while mass effect generators lightened it to reduce the violence of its impending collision.

Sergeant "Hercules" Hansen rode in the middle of the pod, his MEC suspended in thick, reactive ballistic gel, his weapons and sensitive components covered by hardened sealant casing. He watched through the pod's external sensors as it screamed down through the atmosphere, columns of plasma and laser fire lancing back and forth across the storm-wracked landscape. The enormous asymmetric specter of the alien warship stretched out below him, half a kilometer in length, with green threads and wires flashing out from the craft at the hundred-plus FAFNIR drones that were pounding the battleship.

He zoomed in as he descended, observing the battle below as dozens of smashdown pods descended, and frowned behind the heavy helmet encasing his head. the FAFNIRs were laying into the battleship, but they didn't have the punch of an Inferno or Avenger packing dedicated heavy plasma beams or fusion lances.

Hansen pulled up and reviewed the schematics from the old Ethereal battleships. This mission had been dropped on their laps abruptly - he had his teams prepping to support a raid inside one of the underwater colonies - but that was no excuse to not be ready for a boarding op. His squad and the drones coming down with them were loaded and ready for the moment Hackett had given the smashdown order, ready to improvise as needed. Now, while closing on the target, he tried to figure out what their objective really was.

The old battleships, like most Ethereal craft, had been built with their command centers in the bow. Not a brilliant idea… unless one was expecting to be regularly fighting pursuers. XCOM and other Earth military craft had been forced to chase down the Ethereal ships, which made their decision to build the command centers in the crafts' bow prudent if they were expecting the lion's share of incoming fire to strike them in the aft quarter. This ship wasn't necessarily designed to deal with in-atmosphere interceptors, though. The differing weapon placements and energy emissions from the battleship backed that up. Nor did they see any of the easily-targetable power systems that had let XCOM seize one of the battleships during Operation Slingshot.

_Squad, Hercules,_ he transmitted. _Amidships looks like its the most heavily armored. If I had kidneys still, I'd bet both of them that's where their command center is. _He paused, checking the sensors again, and resisted the urge to shake his head. The reactive gel wouldn't let him anyway. _Don't see an obvious way in. Be prepped to blow a hole if needed._

He received acknowledgements as they fell closer. Hansen braced himself, at least mentally, for the coming impact. The battleship expanded, faster and faster, even with the thrusters firing and the mass effect core lightening the entire pod. Smashdown required a dangerous balance between speed and survivability on impact; going too slow would allow defenses to easily pick off the pods, and going to fast resulted in pulverized electronics and liquefied organics.

They passed through the storm o gelf fire, entering an instant of clear air as the battleship screamed up toward the pods, and then a shuddering impact ran through the capsule. Even with the impact gel, Hansen was violently shaken from the crash; were it not for both his mechanical components and the gel, parts of him would have been reduced to powder and shards.

He heard gunfire overhead through the insulating metal and gel, the external plasma and laser weapons mounted on top of the pod firing at nearby movement. A moment later, he received a warning that the exterior seals were about to blow. The gel immediately loosened, becoming roughly as consistent as water, and Hansen sank to the bottom of the pod, setting his feet and hefting his weapon.

The exterior hatch blasted loose in another jarring detonation, opening the interior of the pod, and impact gel poured out. Hansen leapt clear of the pod, grenade launchers on his shoulders primed, particle cannon in hand, and close-combat weaponry ready to deploy.

Hansen piloted a Brawler-class MEC, kitted for close-quarters assault. The current-gen MEC power suits were terribly potent beasts, a marriage of human design and Citadel refinement and efficiency. They were a half-meter shorter than the looming beasts of old, their limbs slimmer and more precise. A mass effect core let them alter their mass and inertia on the fly, giving them unprecedented agility, and flash-fabrication meant that ammunition was a non-issue for most of their weapons. A tank-grade kinetic barrier wreathed the Brawler, and between that and the ablative, heat-resistant vahlenite plating, it was able to withstand colossal amounts of plasma.

His red and gray-painted MEC stomped out into the downpour, and sickly green fire immediately slammed into the shields before he could even get his bearings. The grenade launcher automatically backtracked the source of the fire, and retaliated with a trio of rocket-propelled microgrenades, and the enemy plasma slackened off.

Now that he was standing atop the ship, he could see substantial differences. The old battleships had exposed power systems and riddled with dips and valleys across its hull. They had almost seemed like half-constructed warships, missing parts of their hulls that left vital components exposed. This ship was completely enclosed. Its outer hull featured flatter planes and less room to hide and maneuver, with clear armor designed to defend against ship-to-ship weapons instead of fighter-mounted beams and fusion lances.

_Masamune, we're down on the hull,_ Hansen sent as other pods smashed into the battleship and began disgorging their contents. HULU drones, ODIN support guns, FENRIR assault bots, and other MEC troopers. _Deploying microdrone recon. This bitch will be a tough nut to crack. Can I get some analysis?_

_Hercules, Masamune acknowledges. We're networking and running scans now. If there's a weak spot, we'll find it._

_Copy that. _He switched channels to his squad, noting that the MECs were spreading out and sweeping the hull. Plasma abruptly lashed past, less than fifty meters away, and he spotted what looked like a pack of Sectoids but clad in blue and black armor running among dips and external components in the hull. The MECs and drones immediately returned fire, and at least one of the little bastards vanished under the furious counterfire.

_Move out and deploy recon microdrones,_ Hercules ordered, raising his particle cannon. _Sweep this hull and see if you can find us a way inside!_

* * *

A Sectoid tumbled toward Shepard, its arms flailing wildly, wreathed in the dark blue of altered gravity. He sighted and burned the spindly creature down with two shots in the torso. The plasma was actually repelled by the first hit, splashing off the armor and turning it white hot, but it took the second shot to actually burn through and into the alien underneath, stilling it. Whatever the armor was, it could at least shed the first shot without being overwhelmed, putting it on the same level as basic personal carapace armor.

The other Sectoids had been cut down quickly as they emerged from the sheds, the mixed XCOM and Citadel team pouring fire into the aliens while moving in an aggressive, bounding advance. Shepard counted at least ten of the aliens killed by the time he slid into cover beside one of the storage sheds, reloading his plasma rifle's charge pack. The remaining Sectoids were retreating, bounding and leaping over and behind the buildings with movements that reminded him of the old Thin Men.

One of them wasn't quite quick enough, seized in mid-air by a biotic pull, and was dragged back toward the advanced humans and turians. A burst of kinetic fire from Saren-Kiris stilled the clone, armor-piercing rounds tearing through the plating like paper. The turians had kept to kinetic weaponry even after they had been given plasma weapon blueprints, due to the versatility of mass accelerators, trading raw power for adaptive armaments. Shepard could see messages flashing back and forth between his team and the turians on his AR, signaling each step of the bounding advance through standard translation algorithms. Kandros ran into cover behind him, and he signaled that he was going to advance, and she nodded, raising her rifle.

Shepard slowed and bolted around the corner. He could see indicators on his AR, lines of pale blue that reached out from Kandros' rifle, its electronics reporting where she was aiming and bouncing it to him across the tactical network. He watched it slide past him in slow motion to fire upon one of the Sectoids that was clambering along the top of the sheds, kinetic rounds flickering past and slamming into the Sectoid's armor.

Shepard coiled his feet underneath him and leapt up onto the building. His link with Brutus and Tam's overwatch and the other recon microdrones told him what to expect as his feet touched down, and with the enhanced speed and perception in his slowed state, he was firing immediately, burning down a Sectoid a dozen paces away. Two more of the armored aliens were scrambling away, one diving for cover over the edge of the shed while the other spun to shoot Shepard.

It never got the chance. A kinetic round punched through the helmet and exploded out the opposite side of its armor, at the same moment that Shepard put two bolts through its torso.

_Good shooting, Charlie,_ Shepard sent as he turned, firing on the Sectoids atop the sheds on the other side of the walkway.

He saw Saren-Vanis launching himself up onto the building, landing in a low crouch and blasting another Sectoid in the torso with a pair of bursts. A couple of the small aliens on that side of the walkway were still alive, but they were in full retreat, leaping for the entrance tot he dome. Even with the new armor and artificial muscles, they were no match for the advanced technology and elite soldiers of both humanity and the Citadel. XCOM had only suffered one casualty in this fight so far, and that was due to the serpentine snipers.

The mixed team pushed forward, firing after the fleeing Sectoids. Behind them, Shepard could see Alma, James, and Saren-Kiris' markers on the landing pad, moving up to emplace their heavy firepower to shoot through the doorway. The exterior of the climate station was secure. They had this fight locked down.

_Major, something's wrong,_ Alma messaged him, her attached emotions uncertain and worried.

_What's wrong?_ he asked, unsurprised.

_Sir… I think there's another presence out here somewhere. Psi-shielded, but… _

_Lock it down and send us the location,_ he ordered, while signaling the rest of the teams to move up while he and Saren-Vanis covered the doors into the dome.

An alert flashed on his AR from Charlie, marking the door, and his heart sank right as a trio of huge, hulking humanoid beasts appeared in the doorway to the climate station. They wore dark blue and black armor, glowing white lines tracing along the heavy vahlenite plating, but their movements and furious roars were unmistakable.

Mutons.

Two of these Mutons were carrying light carbines in their main hands, while their off hands were toting enormous, flat-planed, rectangular shields large enough to completely cover their bodies. The third was clad in even heavier armor, and wielding a gleaming cannon in both hands, its length wrapped with coils and tubes glowing a sickly green.

_Take them out!_ Shepard ordered as the Mutons lumbered toward the doorway, and he snapped up his rifle. He took careful aim at the Muton carrying the cannon and fired a quick burst. Plasma bolts lanced into the hulking humanoid beast's upper torso.

And halted about half a meter from the armor, splashing against a gleaming, transparent blue barrier that wrapped around the alien's body.

The Mutons had kinetic barriers.

"Oh, that is bullshit," Shepard breathed.

The shield-carrying Mutons let the Sectoids run past them, then set their barricades down in the doorway, filling the entrance almost completely, leaving a thin gap between them. The cannon-carrying alien then shoved his weapon through the gap, and a heartbeat later the walkway was awash in a river of blazing green hellfire and steaming rain.

* * *

Purple light flashed and raged around Paxton Fettel's body. He struggled, but even distracted, the Ethereal's sheer mental presence held him in check. His back was pressed against the wall of the interior structure, the pressure against his body overwhelming.

**_The New One's kin assault us from all sides,_** the Ethereal mused, and Fettel could feel twitches in the psychic pressure pushing him down. The Ethereal was shifting its power, possibly issuing telepathic orders. He could hear the liquid reports of plasma fire in the distance, a stream of heat and violence, but distant and irrelevant.

He shoved back, pitting his strength against the alien's once more while it was distracted, and felt its entire attention shift back toward him for a moment. Crushing force hammered his body and piercing agony sliced into his mind, and for a few moments all will to resist was shattered.

With little further concern, the alien turned its attention away to the larger battle.

_T**his one's Gift runs deep,**_ the Ethereal mused. **_Leashed and held in check. Potent, but uncontrolled. So little true discipline or refinement._**

Fettel gathered his thoughts again as the Ethereal's own words flowed through his mind. No, direct force-on-force was not an option. It wielded too much psionic energy. They were… more than they had been when mankind had fought them before. Or at least this creature was. Directly contesting it with his own Gift was foolish.

He looked up, ignoring the pain stretching across his chest and pounding in his skull, and came face to face with the eyeless helm of the Muton bodyguard. It towered only a few meters away, heavy plasma weapon casting the area in a pale green light, the barrel leveled at his head. He heard it grunt, a simple, matter-of-fact threat, and behind that was discordant thoughts: simple brute instinct standing next to the complexities of Ethereal engineering and military tactics.

**_Perhaps this expedition will yield a greater bounty than expected._**

Animal mental patterns that triggered advanced tactical behaviors. A mind built like a combat computer, simple observations and instinctual patterns triggering another layer of mental capacity, which allowed for advanced responses and abstract thinking tightened in a laser-like focus. It wasn't _allowed_ to think for itself, except when specific sensory patterns and biochemical locks enabled higher thought.

Fettel peered into the duality of the Muton's thought patterns, and comprehended how such beasts were so readily controlled. The patterns were such that the Muton had the… well, he would name them the psionic equivalent of strings or buttons. Tug here, trigger this response. Press there, trigger another action. It was a weapon of blood and flesh and cybernetics, waiting to be directed.

So Fettel reached out and poured his mind into the vessel.

Psionic mind control was a disturbing experience for all involved. Most people described it as something akin to a seizing the body, struggling against the willpower of the victim as well as one's own mental disassociation. The controller could feel the victim's own emotions and sensations, though each psychic described the experience differently; some only felt their victim distantly, while others had nightmares or seizures from the mental overload of feeling everything the target experienced.

Fettel encountered no disassociation. He sensed a brief instance of stretching, electrical tingling racing through his brain, and an instant later-

Power. Raw, sheer, physical strength and agility, beyond anything he could imagine. Pulsing, raging fury lancing through him, kept in check by ticking boxes and electrical jolts. Words he couldn't understand scrolled past his eyes. Gases with their own distinct, hideous taste, filled his mouth and lungs, and instinct told him he was too light and moving too fast. He should have been standing on a world with five times the gravity of this rock.

And he was staring down a limp, unmoving human body. Pale skin, black hair, eyes glowing faintly.

His body.

He looked down, and saw he was clutching a massive plasma weapon in colossal, armor-encased fingers. Faint wisps of red lightning rolled along the armor, similar to when he'd used his own psychic abilities. He blinked in shock, realizing what had happened, but not how.

Fettel had not taken control of the Muton. He'd _become_ the Muton.

**_The female's potential cannot be wasted. More are required to seize this one alive. Deploy the remainder. _**

He whirled, legs moving in uncertain, drunken steps. The Ethereal's attention was still turned toward the dome's entrance, along with the other bodyguard.

He raised the plasma cannon toward the creature that would have collared him just like his previous captors. Instinct and fury pulsed through him, despite his dominance of this particular body, and he couldn't hold back the howl of violence as he pulled the trigger and poured a column of fire into the Ethereal's back.

* * *

Shepard lay prone on top of the shed, the world around him ticking past a snail's pace, trying to find an option to destroy or bypass the impregnable barrier of Mutons and plasma that sealed off the entrance to the dome. With a couple of thoughts, he marked the two new types of Mutons, designating the one with the cannon as a "Muton Heavy" and the pair with the shields as "Muton Phalanxes." He also tagged the other serpentine aliens with a quick designation of "Snakemen." He'd come up with something better later when they weren't getting shot at.

XCOM troops ducked into cover, hunkering down behind the limited cover offered by the sheds. The plasma raged with blinding fury, melting into ceramic and metal that was never meant to handle fire from guns that should have been mounted on vehicles. The troops returned fire, kinetic and plasma shots slamming into the shields covering the Muton guards, but their barriers were too powerful, and their armor rendered them nearly immune to the heat boiling over them.

Concentrated fire might eventually be able to break their kinetic barriers and penetrate their shields with raw thermal energy, but Shepard couldn't see a good site to emplace Vega or Saren's heavy weapons without exposing them. The Muton with the massive plasma cannon swept it back and forth, raking fire over their positions but never holding long enough on any one soldier to burn through their cover, but that would change if the Exo or Ursa got into a shooting position.

Shepard frowned, gritting his teeth through the mounting pain of holding his heightened mental state. The Muton wasn't pressing an attack on any one target. This was suppressing fire, which meant it was either trying to hold them back, or pinning them in place.

_I need eyes out,_ Shepard sent to his squad. _Watch for flankers. Wade, you have a fix on those other minds?_

_They're outside the dome, and mobile, but I can't get a fix on them,_ Alma replied, her words tinged with frustration. Shepard checked her, and spotted her marker next to Vega's on the landing pad. Another glance showed Saren-Kiris still crouched on his rooftop, observing the Mutons, while his team had inched up closer.

_Kandros is preparing to breach their barriers,_ Saren-Kiris abruptly messaged. _Hold position. We will bypass this strongpoint momentarily._

The cannon-toting Muton abruptly jerked, fire faltering for a moment and shaking its head. Shepard nearly moved to order an attack, but saw the beast set its feet and ready its weapon again.

Then there was a sudden flash of warning on his AR, sent by Alma, and a hostile marker appeared a dozen meters away, moving straight toward him at lightning speed.

* * *

Garrus frowned behind the helmet covering his metallic face.

"Zero penetration?" he asked. Those were tungsten AP rounds, made for penetrating vehicle engines and heavy hardsuits.

"You pissed it off," Alison replied, watching the Muton shake its head and hunker down behind its fellows before resuming fire.

"This rifle doesn't have enough impact," Garrus muttered. "I need HEAT ammo."

He heard the rustle of a ballistic weave pouch being opened, and Alison passed him an ammunition converter and a thumbnail-sized OS disc. He activated his omnitool, setting it to HUD only so the light wouldn't give him away, and she slid the disc into the port on the back of his gauntlet so the device could assemble the few additional pieces that would be swapped out of the rifle.

"Dammit!" he hissed as the warning marker suddenly appeared, dashing toward Shepard at blurring speed, rainwater flying off a dark figure that had leapt on top of the shed. Garrus' carbine twitched, and cracked as he fired one-handed.

A spray of dark liquid, and the figure spun around and then leapt up and backward, chased by flashes of emerald plasma.

"What the hell is that?" Garrus said as he watched the tall, lean figure actually weave between Shepard's return fire, even while dark blood flew from a gaping hole in its flank.

* * *

_Thin Man_, Shepard messaged the others as the humanoid creature ducked and dodged at speeds almost comparable to his own.

It certainly matched the form of the humanoid infiltrators that had been part of the Ethereal invasion, although this one's movements were less serpentine and flexible while still being just as fast. Like the rest of the aliens under these particular Ethereals, it wore some kind of dark, flexible armor plating that clung tight to its body from head to toe. It's head was encased in an angular helmet with the familiar brutish curves of Ethereal armor design. In one hand it was wielding a short, cylindrical, carbine-length weapon that lacked the distinctive glow of plasma weaponry, and in the other it was carrying a half-meter long, slightly-curved vahlenite blade. Shepard's sensors could pick up enough scattered electromagnetic energy coming off the blade's length that he figured it was a high-frequency weapon. There were no element zero masses in the creature's armor, so no kinetic barriers.

Still, armored Thin Men with super speed and fucking _swords_.

_Bullshit_.

The acid spikes of pain in his skull were digging deeper, but Shepard pushed through the pain, tracking the alien and leading his fire into its path. Plasma lanced out, slamming into its flank as it juked away, and the armor erupted in white-hot violence. The creature bounced back, leaping off the side of the building. Shepard half expected the typical spray of toxic chemicals from the wound, but instead saw dark liquid bleeding from the gaping wound in its side in the instant before it dropped out of sight.

The movements were definitely different from what he remembered from the training videos and recordings. This one definitely lacked the inhuman serpentine fluidity of their previous incarnation. An effect of their armor, maybe?

He released the energy flowing through his body, and the pain faded instantly. Shepard ran to the edge of the shed's roof, pursuing the alien, and on his AR display he spotted two more markers indicating these new Thin Men. Alma marked one appearing behind the Muton defensive position, while the other-

_MacTavish!_ Shepard messaged, but the sergeant had already spotted the third alien dropping in behind his position, only a few meters away. He and the trooper next to him were in cover behind one of the sheds, hiding from the Muton Heavy's fire, and the Thin Man vaulted up onto the top of the shed and dropped down upon them. Both men spun on the alien, firing at the same time as it loosed a shot from its carbine. A spray of flechettes erupted from the weapon, tearing into MacTavish's torso and left arm and biting through the Atlas armor plating and artificial muscle. He stumbled back from the blast, while the other trooper sprayed plasma into the alien.

The armored Thin Man weaved around the plasma with the same speed as the one Shepard had faced, and bolted forward. Its blade flashed, and there was a scream of broken metals and polymers as the edge sheared through armor like paper. The XCOM trooper's head flew up into the air, flesh charred and the electronics in the neck seals glowing white-hot. The Thin Man whipped toward MacTavish as the body tumbled to the metal walkway in a crash of metal-on-metal.

Lightning erupted over the alien's body, blue electrical sparks cascading over the armor, and the Thin Man twitched and stumbled. Kinetic rounds slammed into its torso from Kandros' rifle, the turian agent standing on the opposite side of the walkway between the sheds. The turian agent leveled her omnitool to fire a second grenade while shooting one-handed, and the Thin Man jerked and leapt out of her line of fire, leaving a trail of dark blood.

MacTavish caught it in mid-leap, plasma lancing into its side and sword arm, severing the latter at the elbow as it cleared the rooftop and bolted away.

In the instant all of that had taken, Shepard reached the edge pf the roof, sweeping for the alien he had engaged. A message flickered across his AR, from Alma.

_I'm trying to track them,_ she sent. _Their minds are shielded, and… wrong. I think they're psionic._

_Psychic Thin Men?_ he sent back, sweeping the outer side of the building for the alien._ That is serious bullshit._

_Agreed, sir, _Alma sent._ If they have Internal ability,_ _it explains their speed_.

As soon as she sent that, the Thin Man that had attacked Shepard was bounding back onto the rooftop next to him, carbine rising to fire again. The world _slowed_ around him, pain jabbing at his temples once again, and Shepard whirled on the alien. Its blade slashed up, and he wrenched his upper body backward, barely evading the high-frequency sword that would have cut through his torso.

The blade instead intersected the barrel of his plasma rifle, and a flash of vicious green energy erupted from the weapon, scrambling Shepard's sensors for an instant, and he jumped backward on pure instinct. The flash was nowhere near as destructive as an actual plasma detonation; built-in failsafes ensured that. But the blindness could have been just as lethal for the instant it took the helmet's sensors to recover. His right hand found his sidearm, and Shepard snapped up and deployed the plasma pistol as he came to a halt, psi-cloak sweeping back and shedding rainwater.

The Thin Man was crouched on the edge of the roof, shaking its head, apparently just as disoriented by the explosion as Shepard. Charred pieces of valhenite casing lay between them, all that remained of the rifle.

Shepard fired, but the alien was skittering sideways even as he pulled the trigger, and the moment its feet touched the rooftop again it bounded straight toward him, sword slicing toward his head. He ducked and weaved underneath the blow, coming under its left side, where its armor had been hit previously by both plasma and kinetic fire. Shepard ground his feet into the rooftop, halting his momentum, and his left arm flashed into the flank where the armor had been hit. Blue energy wreathed his arm as the kinetic barrier formed over his fist, and it smashed into the burnt armor and scorched flesh underneath. He impacted hard enough that Shepard could feel metal and bones giving way under the impact, and the creature went tumbling away across the rain-slick rooftop.

A distorted scream filled the air for a moment before the alien rolled to a stop, rain splashing across the armor and the blood pouring from the wound. its body shook for a moment before it started pushing itself up.

Shepard advanced toward it, plasma pistol rising. He could see dark liquid staining his left hand, but it had none of the sizzling, acidic toxic quality of Thin Man blood. In fact, it looked…

_Major, _Alma suddenly messaged, her words tinged with surprise and horror. _Their minds. I know what's wrong with them. Those_ aren't _Thin Men._

The blood was red.

Shepard froze as the creature rose to its feet, and he realized why the movements were so different. It stood and turned to face him, and he narrowed his eyes, sighting the angular helmet and pulling his pistol's trigger.

_I know, Lieutenant,_ he sent back as the beam burned through the helmet. _They're human._


	13. Eleven: Operation CHARRED STEEL Part Two

_**Chapter Eleven: Operation CHARRED STEEL Part Two**_

A sandstorm of pain and fear and pounding adrenaline-fueled berserk rage slashed through Alma's consciousness. Humans and turians and _other_ things were fighting and dying around her, and the madness of battle hammered her awareness. She held against it, a bulwark of unconscious mental discipline staving off the insanity, and James' presence strengthening her own defenses.

The flickering screams of death were flares of pain jamming into her mind. Though the deaths and injuries were largely alien, she felt them all the same. Peering through the chaos was difficult with the sympathetic agony constantly biting into her brain, but she tracked the erratic alien pulses of thought and emotion and kept updating the squad's tactical network with the contacts she was receiving.

And somewhere in the middle of the hurricane of consciousness were the flickering contacts of the others. Shielded, but disturbingly familiar. Like distorted echoes of recognized voices. They flitted about through the combat, difficult to pin down, but becoming stronger and easier to place the more she focused on them.

One, somewhere just beyond the simple, excited fury of the Mutons at the entrance. Another, pushing through the madness on the combined human and turian team's flank. And the last, ghosting through the chaos, directly toward Shepard's burning, steady signal.

Alma sent alerts, warning her team of the enemy positions, and a heartbeat later the spike of vicious emotions of combat erupted from Shepard and the alien he engaged. There was a burst of agony from the alien - a disturbingly universal sensation no matter the species - and Shepard moved in pursuit.

Another blaze of pain and fury erupted from the other side of the battlefield as MacTavish and another trooper engaged the second alien, and then the abrupt, ripping burst of disassociation and emptiness she had long since learned to associate with body-death. Alma's knees went watery for a couple of seconds as her own nervous system reacted violently to the trooper's death.

She gripped James' armored shoulder with one hand, concentrating and pushing through the disorientation, tracking the Thin Men. It was like they were generating their own interference, as if they were…

_I'm trying to track them,_ she messaged Shepard. _Their minds are shielded and…. wrong. I think they're psionic._

_Psychic Thin Men?_ Shepard messaged back almost instantly. _That is serious bullshit._

Alma bit back a pain-and-anxiety fueled giggle.

_Agreed, sir,_ she replied, and a sudden thought struck her. Thin Men had never shown overt psychic ability, but what if… _If they have Internal ability, it explains their speed._ And their shielding, she didn't add.

She kept scanning, using physical contact with James to steady herself, and focused in on the injured alien fighting Shepard. As they closed to engage again, she concentrated on its mind, locking onto its position. The pulsing of its mind and patterns, and the familiar aura surrounding the creature's body. Yes, _definitely _a psionic pattern, and close to matching an Internal's. Disturbingly close to Shepard's actual patterns.

Then she caught a flash of pure agony from the Thin Man as Shepard drove his fist into its side. The backlash of pain shot down her spine, and Alma sank to one knee. James' attention shifted directly to her, and a hundred questions flitted through his mind, barely contained, and many of them distinctly ursine in nature.

She gasped, hearing the Thin Man's thoughts through its pain, and saw beyond them. She could see the architecture behind the thought patterns, and for an instant she remembered the brain XCOM had interrogated earlier that day.

_Major_, she messaged as she understood why these creatures were so familiar. _Their minds._ She took a sharp breath.

_I know what's wrong with them. Those _aren't _Thin Men._

The pain, the fear, the psionic patterns… their armor and shielding had blocked their nature from her at first, but now she understood what the Ethereals had done.

And so did Shepard.

_I know, Lieutenant,_ he sent back, and then the sensation of a human death lanced through her again, a void replacing the candlelight of the creature that Shepard had been fighting. _They're human._

As the sympathetic shock of body-death passed, Alma refocused, tracking the other… humans. Of the remaining pair, the one behind the Mutons remained still, while the other was reeling in pain but flickering along the edge of the sheds near Saren's position. She updated their locations on the tacnet, and a moment later Shepard sent another message to the team.

_Squads, be advised,_ he sent. _New contacts appear to be genetically human. Protected status does not apply. Capture if possible but use lethal force if necessary._

_Designate new contacts "Corrupted."_

* * *

Saren's eyes remained locked on the Mutons guarding the door into the shelter dome, data flowing across his AR from the embedded sensors and squad tacnet. In one corner of his awareness, he was receiving real-time updates as Kandros prepped her munitions. The skies overhead flashed and pulsed as the human drones and fighters assaulted the exterior of the alien battleship, and his display marked the other "Corrupted" human as it circled on his flank, hiding among the sheds.

He was unsurprised by the Sentinel's revelation; it matched Ethereal behavior for them to integrate species into their ranks. For a moment he mused on what the Ethereals would have made from turian specimens, but he immediately dismissed that thought. They had a mission to complete.

"Munition prepped," Kandros reported. "Ready to fire."

"Particle accelerator charged," Kiris added.

_Shepard, draw fire,_ Saren sent. A moment later two of the XCOM soldiers opened up, spraying the shielded Mutons with concentrated plasma fire. The bolts splashed against the Phalanxes' shields and kinetic barriers, washing harmlessly over the aliens, and the Heavy shifted its weapon return fire.

At that moment, Kandros leaned out of cover, omnitool lit and arm extended, and she fired an overload electronic-warfare microgrenade. The modified version she launched was several times larger than the normal variant, which was typically so small it was barely visible. It struck the kinetic barrier, and a spray of crackling lightning flew over the shields and the Mutons behind them. Normal overload munitions shorted out shield projectors and capacitors, but stronger and more advanced kinetic barriers had enough capacitors, projectors, and failsafes to keep operating at reduced strength. Saren had suspected that a Muton's armor had more than enough space to house a robust barrier system, which was why Kandros had assembled a larger, more powerful overload projectile.

And Saren saw the familiar, faint blue shimmer of an overtaxed kinetic barrier abruptly flash and dissipate. He snapped his left hand toward the Muton, dark energy pulsing around him at his command. A dark blue disc erupted from his fingertips, the biotic pull swooping down into the leftmost Muton Phalanx's shield. Saren's pull rewrote the direction gravity was pulling for an instant, and the Muton's shield was yanked up and forward. The alien stumbled out of line with its companion, taking a couple of steps out of the doorframe, shield rising up into the air.

Kiris sent a narrow blinding-white particle beam straight through its torso, followed a heartbeat later by four separate bursts of plasma into its chest and an armor-piercing kinetic round that struck the Muton through the visor.

It toppled backward to the walkway in a tremendous crash of incinerated flesh and ruined armor.

_Advance,_ Shepard messaged, and the humans shifted their fire, plasma bolts slamming into the damaged barriers of the remaining pair of Mutons, including a torrent of fire from the ursa uplift Vega. The Muton Heavy was already sidestepping behind the shield of its companion, awkwardly swinging its weapon over the Phalanx's head, while the shield-bearing creature turned to protect the Heavy. Kiris and Kandros were moving forward to assist, but Saren didn't move, instead turning to his left.

The wounded Corrupted touched down on the edge of the shed roof in silence, raising its flechette launcher.

Gravity warped around Saren as he snapped his arm toward the human, and another biotic pull flashed toward the armored figure. The Corrupted sprang sideways, the pale blue bolt crackling past it and breaking apart a few moments later into undirected gravitic pulses. It rolled to its feet, flechette launcher rising to fire.

Saren's shot it dead center in the chest with a neural shock microgrenade. The munition struck and adhered to the Corrupted's armor, and lightning flashed over its body. The human went rigid, shaking violently back arching in silent agony, and it then dropped to its knees, weapon clattering to the rooftop.

Saren hefted his rifle and strode toward the downed creature, shouldering and sighting on its torso. Shepard had killed his target via a headshot, so it would be prudent to keep this one's skull and helmet intact. He already knew the vital points on most human biological variants, but the Ethereals could have made any number of adjustments, so he figured he would need to put many bullets into this one's body before it died.

_Saren, I need that one alive,_ Shepard sent, and the turian's mandibles clicked in annoyance.

The Spectre didn't slow, but he lowered the rifle and activated the arc prong attachment on his left forearm. For a heartbeat he considered just killing the Corrupted anyway, but he agreed with Shepard's reasoning. Saren dialed the arc prongs up to roughly strong enough to discomfit a krogan.

He jammed the prongs into the stunned human's chest, and it shook violently again, electricity blazing around the contact point. Saren then kicked the Corrupted in the chest and knocked it onto its back, and shocked it again. He wasn't sure how the device was working through the alien armor, but the human went limp.

_It appears stunned,_ Saren sent to Shepard, and began assembling a set of omni-cuffs to restrain the human.

Then the front of the Corrupted's helmet exploded in a spray of white light, flying electronics and armor, and bright red blood. Saren blinked, his face covered in human blood and viscera, and peered down at the ruined mess that was once the creature's head.

_Hm. Implanted explosives,_ he messaged, while pulsing his kinetic barriers to wipe the blood off his skin - an expensive but quite useful modification. _The Ethereals do not want their puppets talking._

* * *

The Ethereal vanished under a roiling cloud of green fire, but Paxton Fettel held down the trigger, the deluge of plasma washing over the spindly, hovering alien.

Then the second Muton slammed into his side, roaring in incoherent rage, disbelief and betrayal echoing in its voice. Fettel had an instant to contemplate on how he could recognize the particulars of the alien's speech patterns before it straddled him and started punching his current body with one meaty, armored fist while the other pinned the plasma cannon to the floor.

Then raw hatred and fury spiked through Fettel's body, and his arms snapped up. Automatic, artificially-programmed instructions ran through the Muton's body, both hands locking around the second bodyguard's punching arm. One grabbed its wrist, the other grasped the upper arm just below the shoulder, and Fettel's hijacked body twisted, using all of its considerable musculature to lever the Muton Elite sideways and shift its weight off his own body.

The bodyguard didn't fight him, instead rolling with the shove and pulling its arm free, scooping up its own plasma cannon. Fettel clambered to his feet, bringing his own weapon to bear.

Brilliant purple fury slammed into his cannon, and tremendous force yanked the weapon nearly out of his fingers. At the same time, agony lanced through the Muton's head, and Fettel was aware of a second consciousness forcing its way into the simple-minded creature's brain.

_**New One, you continue to surge and grow,**_ the Ethereal spoke. _**Such power. We would regret smothering your fire before you discover your true limits.**_

Through the Muton's eyes, Fettel could see the Ethereal floating a few meters away, arms extended toward his stolen body. The blue robes were scorched or burned away in many places, and the once-reflective metal of its helmet and shoulders was blackened and charred. The Ethereal's reservoir of psionic power still roared and pressed against his awareness, although it had dimmed somewhat with the effort of deflecting so much heat. Fettel's presence in this body was being overridden by raw strength, and he had to fight to keep control of his motor functions.

Then the second bodyguard strode forward, leveling its cannon toward his head from less than a meter away, and the stolen Muton's head vanished in a beam of plasma.

Fettel's eyes snapped open, the pure, liquid strength of the Muton vanished and replaced with the familiar power of his own limbs. The unthinking, instinctive violence and fury that permeated the very muscles and blood of the looming beast had also disappeared. He looked up, blinking and disoriented, to see the body he had been inhabiting topple to the floor, head gone and upper body a charred mess.

_**Total consciousness transferal,**_ the Ethereal spoke. _**A rare capacity even among our collective.**_

The Ethereal floated closer, the bodyguard looming behind it. This close, he could see the roiling patterns of plasma in the enormous cannon, and the bandoleer of grenades around its waist.

_**Your patterns are unique. Wasted in warrior conversion or command synchronization. We must learn more.**_

Fettel knew what that meant.

"No," he snarled. No more labs, no more experimentation, no more cutting or torture.

_**Your desires are inconsequential,**_ it spoke, but Fettel wasn't listening.

The alien was still speaking with its booming psionic voice when Fettel launched his consciousness into its bodyguard. This Muton was at least vaguely aware of the potential threat, but there was some sort of… block in place that prevented it from thinking about being controlled and acting against it. The creature managed a brief groan of surprise-

And the liquid strength, the beating power, and leashed rage were Fettel's again.

He had only an instant before the Ethereal acted. No time to aim or plan. He dropped the plasma cannon altogether and sent his new body straight into the Ethereal's side, crushing the thin, robed figure under a colossal slab of meat and metal. One massive arm closed around the Ethereal's body, enormous legs pumping and shoving the psionic alien away from Fettel's prone body. The other went to the Muton's grenade bandoleer.

Raw psionic power lanced out, slashing into the Muton's body and mind, and biting, burning pain cascaded through the Muton's body. And yet, it was no deterrent. The agony only increased the fury and determination in Fettel's hijacked nervous system, and a savage roar of defiance and hate erupted from the Muton's mouth. The Ethereals had engineered their frontline warriors to become more emboldened and aggressive in the face of pain and death.

Fettel didn't know exactly how the grenades operated, but the Muton did, and it pressed the activation key for one of the explosives while the Ethereal tore into its body. Armor plates warped, skin burned and split, and the muton's brain withered under the assault. Fettel knew he had seconds before the alien completely destroyed his puppet, and he wrapped both arms around the Ethereal, squeezing tight, before releasing control.

He opened his eyes and immediately covered them with his forearm, right before a brief, new sun erupted, spreading brilliant green light across the interior of the dome. He rolled aside, and something heavy and equal parts metallic and meaty slapped across his body before rolling a couple of meters away. A keening wail struck him, slicing into his psyche, and Fettel had to stop and focus his own power to force the Ethereal's psionic scream out of his own mind. It trailed off after a few moments, becoming weak and unfocused.

Fettel pushed himself to his feet, legs unsteady from the psychic assault he had endured, and began questing out with both his normal and psionic senses. He found the flickering but still-potent energy of the Ethereal, while the floor and walls around him were littered with the scorched, meaty remains of the Muton.

The psionic alien lay in a heap of burnt flesh and twisted metal, twitching on the floor. Purple light leaked from its body, primarily around the head, and its long, slender form was curled and broken. Only one of its four arms was moving, lifted in a warding gesture toward Fettel, but he ignored it, crouching beside the creature. The helmet was half-molten, but he could see through the gap in the mask, into the eyes. Four of them, glowing a pale purple, a pair on either side of the head.

_We have underestimated you and your kin__**,**_ the voice spoke. _Again. But… ignorant. Unable to ascend._

"Perhaps," Fettel replied, and pulled a knife from within his coat: unpowered, stainless metal, slightly curving, and with a serrated edge. A hunter's weapon. He grabbed the base of the still-smoking helmet, ignoring the pain, and yanked the Ethereal's head back.

_Foolish human,_ it whispered. _Without our guidance-_

"I tire of this conversation."

He plunged the knife into the Ethereal's neck, and twisted. Another scream of psychic agony, but weaker, and then more purple light poured from the Ethereal's frail corpse. He twisted the knife, drawing it back and forth. The crackle of burnt flesh was mixed with the smoother, squisher sounds of raw meat being sliced open. Purple energy bathed Fettel's hands, and a sickly dark yellow fluid washed over his gloved fingers.

He pulled, and a long strip of meat came free, leaking psychic energy and dripping with the alien's strange ichor. Fettel stared at it for a moment.

"I believe I will still have your guidance," he said. "In a manner of speaking."

He bit down, ripping and tearing, and inhaled the scents and psychic light.

And then he _knew._

* * *

A twinge of pain and noise ran through Shepard's awareness, and he had seen enough psionic violence to know what a backlash felt like. Something with a massive psychic footprint had just been mortally injured. He peered through the driving rainstorm, watching steam erupt as plasma weapons hammered the two remaining Mutons' shields.

_Wade?_ he sent. It took a couple of seconds before he got a reply.

_Ethereal,_ she sent, her text tinged with pain and surprise. _Something just killed one. Fettel. His signature's right next to the epicenter of the death backlash._

Fettel killed an Ethereal? Singlehandedly? Shepard frowned, and shook his head. This was going to make taking him alive even more complicated.

_Masamune, this is Shepard,_ he sent. An acknowledgement returned immediately. _We have nearly secured the entry to the dome._

In the couple of seconds it took for a response to come down, Shepard saw a flash erupt on the Muton Heavy's helmet, followed by the booming report of a high explosive round and a spray of ruined armor plating and viscera. The alien slumped and crashed to the floor. Grenades shot toward the Phalanx as it backed away, a mixture of concussion, high explosive, and ECM explosives. It stumbled out of the barrage, shield dipping, and raised a plasma carbine in its gun hand.

_Requesting reinforcements. My team has suffered multiple losses and we have evidence that Fettel is significantly more powerful than projected._

It took a couple of seconds for a response to arrive. In that time, two of the XCOM troopers, along with Kandros, had advanced on the Phalanx, pouring fire into its shield from multiple directions. Alma's markers showed the remaining Corrupted deeper inside the dome, moving toward Fettel's rough position.

_Shepard, this is Masamune. We're vectoring two Voidrangers with squads on board to your position. Be advised, proximity to the battleship means that they will need to execute an evasive approach around the island. ETA six minutes._

The Phalanx jerked as another high-explosive round hit it in the leg, through an opening of barely a few millimeters under the rim of the shield. It turned and backpedaled from the force of the explosion, exposing part of its flank, and half a dozen shots from multiple angles lanced in. Armor twisted and broke under the barrage, and flesh sizzled. The Muton howled and surged forward, firing wildly, but the soldiers and agents kept up with calm, disciplined fire, and within a couple of steps the alien ground to a halt. Multiple bolts of plasma and bursts of kinetic rounds sent it toppling backward, and the Phalanx crashed to the floor.

"All teams, move in!" Shepard ordered, and he bolted to the edge of the rooftop and leapt off, firing his grappling hook to pull him toward the dome entrance. His boots impacted on the walkway, and he rose, pistol aimed into the doorway and ready to fire.

Blinding, deep purple light erupted inside the climate dome, and space twisted in chaotic distortions. Shepard held up a hand in warning as more wormholed erupted after the first.

The Muton that came charging out screamed loud enough to vibrate Shepard's bones. It wore black armor with gold trim, and charged with speed and agility that belied its huge size, standing a head and shoulder above the pack of other blue-armored Muton soldiers that emerged alongside it. Shepard recognized the speed and ferocity of this breed of Muton, but the enormous black and blue, rectangle-headed hammer crackling with electricity it was swinging was entirely new.

"Berserker!" he warned, slowing time and leaping aside. The colossal Muton's hammer arced down with frightening speed, missing Shepard by less than a meter and sending a spiderweb of arcing electricity through the metal floor.

As Shepard sprang aside, he caught sight of the Ethereal floating behind them, flanked by another Corrupted carrying a long plasma rifle and a tall, armor-plated mechanized power suit. Like all the other minions of these Ethereals, it was painted black and blue, with a pair of long, narrow cannons for arms. He couldn't see the alien's face behind the black armored canopy wrapping around its head, but he knew a Sectoid was piloting the heavy suit.

_Ethereal, Mectoid, another Corrupted, five Mutons, and a Berserker,_ he messaged the squad as his feet hit the floor and he rolled away from another devastating swing of that skittered sideways, and a narrow, piercing beam of plasma lanced down from overhead. _And Snakemen._

_Masamune, we could use some help._

* * *

Far above the battle in the weather station, the skies burned with green and red fire. Ethereal plasma batteries lanced emerald violence into the sky, striking down FAFNIR drones, which swarmed about and returned fire with laser and plasma weapons. Torrents of rain fell across the battleship's hull, exploding into steam wherever the superheated weapons struck.

"Hercules" Hansen's MEC team advanced across the irregular hull, pushing through rain and enemy plasma fire. They were augmented by FENRIR drones and a pair of ODIN discs, the latter of which were providing heavy fire support. Sectoids were clambering along the surface of the battleship, and somewhere in the rain were a couple of those cloaked serpentine snipers that Shepard had designated Snakemen. The ODINs' rotary laser cannons were keeping the snipers suppressed while the MECs and FENRIR units advanced, the robotic hounds charging through the Sectoids' fire to assault the aliens in close.

Their target was just ahead, less than ten meters away, marked on Hansen's AR display. The recon microdrones has identified a section of the hull that looked like a suitable place to breach. Corporal "Faultline" Laarsen was already crouched at the otherwise-unremarkable spot on the ship's hull in his black and gray Breacher-class MEC, readying a pair of heavy hull-breaching mines. Lance Corporal Jenkins - the kid was green enough that he hadn't yet earned a nickname - was a few meters further ahead in his Shogun MEC, deploying a stationary kinetic barrier projector. A shimmering barrier, two meters tall and four meters wide, flashed into existence between Faultline's position and the Sectoids shooting at them.

"Gimme a couple of seconds, Herc," Faultline called out. Hansen nodded, while launching another barrage of grenades over the top of the barrier. Jenkins finished deploying his barrer and unlocked his particle cannon from his back, leveling it at a pair of Sectoids trying to flank their position.

Hansen frowned. Resistance had been light so far, mostly these little bastards. Sure, armored Sectoids backed by cloaked snipers were new, but the half-dozen MECs in his team, backed by the assault drones, were plowing through them without much difficulty. Bitter experience in the first war with the Ethereals had shown battleships were crewed by up to a hundred or more aliens, and could carry several times that in ground troops. Where were the majority of the enemy? Was this ship just lightly manned, and their main combat units down below fighting Major Shepard's team?

"Breach yield calculated," Faultline reported. "Get clear!"

The trio of MECs stood and retreated from the barrier and the charges. Elerium-fueled plasma breachers were terrifyingly powerful, but reserved specifically for entry into fortified structures or ships. They were too heavy for anyone short of a MEC or an Atlas-equipped ursa to effectively carry, and their yields needed to be precisely calculated, depending on how intact one wanted the target ship.

In this case, the charges were… relatively indiscriminate, because they didn't have a precise layout of the interior of the battleship. Faultline's bombs detonated in a bone-and-structural-shaking blast of green destruction and intense heat, all directed downwards into the hull. Smoke, steam, and blistering heat were still pouring out of the hull breach when Hansen rushed forward and peered over into the gap, which was about five meters wide. The ragged rim of the breach glowed white-hot, and he switched to radar scanners while dropping a microdrone scout canister into the gap. The tiny robots deployed and immediately began mapping the interior.

Enemy fire was slacking off, at least partially due to enemy casualties. Most of the Sectoids were being sliced apart by the FENRIR drones, and he saw one serpentine body charred and bleeding on the deck, the Snakeman now a pile of limp coils and limbs.

"You use enough dynamite there?" Hansen muttered when he saw the breach had gone down what appeared to be three entire decks.

"I don't deal in cotton candy and kittens, Herc," Faultine replied. "Unless the kittens are loaded with elerium."

"HULUs in the lead as we clear the corridors, then we'll follow with the FENRIRs," Hansen ordered, and flicked through the most recent intel update, including reports automatically uploaded from Shepard's Mental. "Liberal scout drone use and be ready with counter-psi protocols. There's at least one Ethereal still on this ship, plus whatever other psychic fuckery they're packing."

Which was one of the reasons why smashdowns tended to employ mostly synthetic units. Aside from their disposable nature, drones were immune to a lot of psionic attacks, making them the standard response to any potential psychic threat. MECs were resistant but still partially vulnerable, so if they encountered Ethereals or other psychic aliens, the fully-synthetic units would go in first.

"ODINs," he ordered, "Cover the breach, make sure no one comes at us from behind. _Masamune_, we've got an entry. Marking it for the infantry."

The disc-shaped gun platforms sent their acknowledgements, and Hansen checked the maps the drones were sending back. The bottommost deck that had been breached looked like a primary access route through the core of the ship. A good place to start.

"I'll take the breach first. Let's do something really stupid, men," he said with a grin, and jumped into the hole.

He crashed down in a deafening impact of mechanical limbs and vahlenite floor. He spun, sweeping the long, wide corridor around him, the lighting dim and flickering and the floor scorched where the breaching charge had burned through.

Anything beyond that was cut off in a burst of dark black-purple mist as a Seeker uncloaked right on top of him, wrapping its tentacles around his gun arm. Blinding green light flashed along the corridor, hulking shapes in blue and black armor advancing up the passage toward him. FENRIR drones hit the deck around him, followed by another MEC trooper, who opened fire with a pair of arm-mounted plasma cannons.

Hansen spun, smashing his arm into the wall and utterly crushing the Seeker wrapped around it, while chaos and gunfire erupted all around him.

* * *

Beyond the freshly-arrived pack of Ethereal warriors, Paxton Fettel chewed and swallowed and inhaled. Purple flickers flowed into his body as he drew the Ethereal's residual energy into his body, and the pain and exhaustion from his struggles were amplified. Yet at the same time, made irrelevant. Weakness and suffering became secondary to the energy that was pulsing through his veins, and the chaos of alien knowledge that flooded his mind.

He had never eaten alien flesh before. Armacham had made him consume raw human flesh to test theories on data transmission, and he had retained some of the knowledge of the "donors." This was an overwhelming rush of information, stretching across times and places he couldn't begin to sort out. And much of it was pure chaos, literally alien, without context or cultural comprehension needed to make sense of it.

But some elements were universal. Psionics. Manipulating the energy that they all had access to… that he could understand. The Ethereals' knowledge was vastly beyond his own, working with energies beyond what he could manage, interfacing with the colossal engines of the warship overhead.

If he could reach out, touching the grid of energy fueled by elerium and shaped by the aliens' will and technology….

He heard footsteps, and touched the mind of the creature approaching. Alien patterns, like all of the Ethereals' minions, but the architecture underneath was familiar. Exceedingly so.

The Ethereal-engineered, vat-grown human warrior charged toward him, and Fettel could taste rage and hatred and… grief?

He looked up, the blue-and-black armored figure rushing toward him, a long-barreled plasma weapon in its hands. It raised the weapon, and the emotions behind its mask boiled out. He had killed this hound's master, and it reacted with all the associated emotions.

Was this what the Ethereals had planned to convert him into? A lapdog engineered to love and obey them?

No matter.

The human was shielded from psionic intrusion, but among the psionic knowledge the Ethereal possessed was the method to bypass those defenses, and the power flowing through him allowed Fettel to batter aside the mental defenses of the human servant. The familiar stretching sensation touch him, and-

He was standing in a lithe, lean body, clutching a plasma weapon lined up with his own skull. Or it was, for a moment, as Fettel's body unceremoniously slumped over and face-planted into messy remains of the Ethereal he had killed.

_Awkward_, he thought, and saw text scrolling across his vision. The language was alien, but he understood it: a general warning of a "foreign presence detected" and countermeasures being employed. A defensive system?

Immediately, a swarm of schematics rose up in his memory, hundreds of complex designs that appeared to channel psionic energy in various ways. The Ethereals had devised countless machine to manipulate their energy, but he didn't understand many of their functions at this point.

_I will probably need to eat more,_ Fettel mused, and then turned the plasma rifle around to point at his hijacked body's chin. He caught a flash of fear from the mind he was possessing before he pulled the trigger.

He pushed himself out of the gore-splattered remains of the Ethereal's body, wiping the alien blood off his face with a piece of its burnt robe.

Intense fighting raged from the direction of the dome's entrance. He didn't have much time. Either the Ethereals or XCOM would win, and then they would turn their attention toward him. He couldn't let them take him. Not when he knew what was coming, and before he could begin exacting reparation.

And this body's knowledge gave him the first part of what he needed.

He quested out with his senses, searching for the patterns in the colossal systems of the Ethereal battleship, and he immediately found what he was seeking. The transference system, an impossibly complex and precise device built to navigate the chaos of a planetary atmosphere and open gates through the gravity well and atmospheric interference.

He sent a pulse of power into the system. It replied instantly, and the knowledge of the dead creature at his feet fed him the responses. The machine thrummed, psionic power pouring outward, and time and space ripped apart before him.

Before anyone could respond, or an override could be issued, Paxton Fettel leapt into the portal. There was an instant of noise, disorientation, and a flicker of pain and nausea, and then he was stepping into the corridors of the Ethereal battleship.

Two Mutons stood directly in front of him, snapping up plasma weapons to fire and howling in barely-articulate fury and surprise. Fettel reacted instantly, seizing the one on the right, and spinning toward its companion. The alien was too busy reacting in confusion as Fettel's body dropped to realize a plasma rifle barrel was leveled at its head.

As the Muton fell, Fettel turned the second alien's weapon on itself, and pushed himself off the floor when the inevitable occurred. He shook his head, and glanced behind him. The portal he had opened was gone, leaving him alone on the battleship. It only took him a moment to orient himself - the Ethereal had known this vessel intimately, and there were signs and indicators only they would recognize built into the walls, in the form of the pulsing flow of energy throughout the vessel.

He knew where he was, and more importantly, he knew where he needed to go.

Fettel grinned, the blood of the Ethereal still on his lips and staining his shirt, and he started toward the battleship's bridge.

* * *

_Shepard's under heavy contact inside, _Garrus sent to Alison.

_Relocate_, she replied, and pushed herself up on her one intact hand.

_Close quarters in a climate station, _he messaged as he followed, switching his carbine's sights for close quarters. _Not fun to fight through._

Alison leapt off the side of the ridge and began sliding down the rain-slick rock.

_What is fun to fight through?_ she asked. He slid down the stone after her.

_Gardens, electronics shops. Antique stores, but only if they're classy._

_Gardens?_ Alison asked as the hit the bottom of the slope and bounded forward. Plasma arced past overhead, steam flying form the falling rain.

_You'd be surprised how many gardens rich criminals cultivate on the Citadel,_ he replied. _If our current mind-states live through this, remind me to tell you about a few of the raids I've seen. Some of those high-risk warrants make this look like Tuesday._

* * *

The majority of the XCOM/Spectre team were pushing into the climate station. Alma kept one hand on James' flank as the ursa entered the doorway into the dome, gunfire and emotion raging just ahead. The white-hot fury of the Muton Berserker was a blinding bonfire of pure, violent, overwhelming emotion that drowned out all of the thought patterns of the other aliens and humans. She could see flickers of the others' minds orbiting around the Berserker, and the raging alien's own pure, clear thoughts were focused entirely on Shepard's position, chasing him into the climate station. Beyond that, nothing was stable.

Save for the Ethereal. It loomed beyond, a psionic mountain towering above the noise and violence. Its alien thoughts flowed, clear, bright conduits of directed emotion and thought, pipes of discipline that kept it tightly under control.

And within seconds of the burst of energy that heralded its arrival, the Ethereal's mind narrowed directly upon her. She didn't need to hear its voice in her mind to understand what it was thinking. The aliens had come here for Paxton Fettel, but they were holding position for _her._

_**KNEEL.**_

Its voice was an avalanche, slamming into her mind with force and willpower beyond anything she had encountered, and her own mind and nervous system reacted as though an electrical current rippled through her body. The words and power were edged in emotion: anger, frustration, hunger.

And contempt. An impression of annoyance, of the frustration that came from something that should have been easy but turned agonizingly costly and complicated. The first Ethereal's mental impressions had been powerful but calm, certainty and inevitability inherent in its thoughts and emotions. It knew that even with XCOM's presence, there was no threat.

This Ethereal was _furious_.

_**This pointless struggle has proceeded long enough. Your kin will die. Their allies will die. You will join our collective, and we will leave this worthless stone.**_

Psionic power drove into her mind, purple light slashing through the doorway and into Alma's head. The Ethereal's will clamped around her own thoughts, immense and crushing. She fell to her knees, and could distantly hear the crash of her armored kneepads hitting the rain-slicked walkway. Outside the Ethereal's will, she could feel James' attention, split between engaging the new threats and the creature assaulting her mind.

_**You have the capacity to end this. We have come to this world for a human who bears the Gift. Surrender, incapacitate your kin, and this struggle will end, and we will depart without further loss of life or machine.**_

And even as those words seared through her mind, Alma could see the truth. They would retreat once they had their objective.

She forced her eyes open, looking up toward James' enormous bulk, and beyond. The XCOM and turian squad were just inside the climate station trading fire with the Ethereal's escorts, torrents of plasma and kinetic rounds whipping back and forth between the doorway and the buildings within the dome. Shepard was keeping clear of the Berserker and its shock hammer, but only barely. And above the chaos floated the Ethereal, two arms extended toward her.

Alma clenched her jaw and hit back.

Psionic-on-psionic combat was nothing like a physical struggle. It was a battle of pure force, raw energy made manifest by the Gift. There were no fancy tricks or mental maneuvers, unlike a physical battle. You took your power and smashed it against the enemy's. In that respect, the Ethereals were mountains of power, and few humans had even been able to resist psychic assault, even with psi-shielding and feedback engineering. Fewer still had been able to contest an Ethereal, and Annette Durand had been the only human psychic to ever defeat one in direct combat.

Alma pushed against the Ethereal's presence, pouring raw energy against its own power. She caught a moment of surprise from the alien before its will abruptly broke away from her, and the stream of purple light faltered.

A lightning bolt of a brighter, more chaotic purple shot back toward the Ethereal, pulsing with striations of red and white. It struck the Ethereal in the center of its chest, and the alien screamed in pain, before pushing back against her own will. She caught a glimpse of its alien thoughts, but the Ethereal was already driving her back out of its neural network.

"James," she bit out. The ursa looked back toward her, and she grunted from the strain as the Ethereal repelled her.

"Take the Berserker. I've got this asshole."

She didn't see his grin behind the helmet, but she could sense the inborn, barely-restrained animal rage and savagery, and his glee at releasing it. The ursa bounded forward, shoulder-cannon tracking and firing into the Mutons within the climate station, leaving Alma to her own battle.

The Ethereal countered, anger and frustration blazing within its psionic thrust, and she intercepted the intrusion, pushing back.

_Crap,_ Alma realized as they did battle, mind-on-mind. _I should have thought of something badass to say._

* * *

Shepard sidestepped a beam of plasma that stabbed down from overhead, catching a glimpse of the incoming green fire while the world was slowed. He marked the Snakeman while it was briefly visible after firing, the alien clinging to the interior wall of the dome, one limb and its lower body wrapped around part of the machinery two-thirds of the way up the interior of the building.

If he had the time, Shepard would have taken a few shots at the alien, as it was exposed and an easy target. But even in his current, heightened state, he was only barely keeping ahead of the Berserker and its almost ludicrously-oversized shock hammer. The huge, enraged Muton was frighteningly fast, and Shepard theorized that even a glancing touch from that hammer could probably kill him. Not that he had any intention of finding out.

He fired a trio of quick shots at the Berserker's helmet as he weaved around the plasma fire, and paused only long enough to see the first impact against a kinetic barrier over the alien's visor. He then turned and dashed through the doorway of one of the buildings within the dome while the berserker was blinded - or he hoped, at least. Fortunately, the doorway was human-sized, meaning that the Berserker would need to work to follow.

The interior of the building was industrial-standard white and gray, well lit, and empty of anything alive. To the left was a raised, separate control room accessible via stairs, and to the right were lines of floor-to-ceiling servers and computer towers. In the center was a massive cylinder surrounded by pipes, wiring, and blocky machinery - one of the enormous weather-measuring sensor systems. Other machines and computer equipment, most of it beyond Shepard's understanding, littered the room. Lots of cover, he thought with a nod of approval. On the other side of the building he could see another doorway.

He started across the room, weaving around the weather and computer equipment. If the other doorway led outside, he could round the building and flank the enemy outside. A few grenades or overload munitions could at least disable the Mutons' shields and let his team drop them.

But first things first, he had to deal with the Berserker. And unfortunately, he had few real options to down the Muton as long as its barrier was up. He'd been kitted for direct assault over electronic warfare support, and had no disruptor grenades, nor did his omnitool have the combat engineering functionality to flash-forge tech mines beyond stunners. His plasma rifle had mounted an underbarrel kinetic shotgun with disruptor ammunition, but that had been destroyed when the Corrupted had sliced it apart, leaving Shepard with just his pistol. Enough hits would _eventually _transmit enough heat to burn through the Berserker's armor, or if he could find the emitters a few precise shots could fry-

A tremendous roar of shattered concrete and twisted machinery erupted behind him, and he sprang aside, hunks of debris whipping past like shotgun pellets to smash through the equipment scattered around the room. Shepard hit the floor and rolled, kicking up onto his feet, just as the Berserker screamed and shouldered through the gap in the wall it had just smashed. It tore through the wall as though it were made of paper, launching more debris across the room, and stomped toward Shepard.

He bolted, slowing time again for just long enough to let him build up momentum - and even that sent a spike of pain through his temples. Shepard juked and weaved around the equipment, heading for the central cylinder, and he fired his plasma pistol toward the Berserker's face while prepping a stunner grenade. The blinding bolts splashed off the Muton's shields, and Shepard wasn't sure how much they were doing to the beast's armor, but the timbre of its roars altered with what he suspected was annoyance, and it slowed a bit, raising its hammer arm to shield its eyes.

Then is free hand grabbed one of the damaged hunks of machinery on the floor, and with a scream of tortured metal and the pops of broken bolts it ripped the machine's casing loose. The Berserker's arm pumped, and a piece of metal and plastic half of Shepard's mass went hurtling toward his face.

He caught sight of the Muton's arm extending, and slowed again for an instant, dropping into a slide as the alien released and the impromptu projectile whipped past. It missed his head by few centimeters, flying across the room to gouge a fist-sized hole in the wall. Shepard leveled his omnitool arm at the Muton as he slid, and fired the stunner into its chest. The grenade detonated, and the Muton howled in fury, taking a couple of steps back and shaking its head.

He pushed himself up to his feet, rolling around behind the central cylinder.

_MacTavish, sitrep?_

_Got an arseload of Muton here, sir,_ the squadleader replied. _Normal ones are keeping us busy, no new casualties yet. Lost track of their Corrupted. Mechtoid's fucked off somewhere, Saren's Exo fork is chasing it. Wade's keeping that Ethereal locked down. You got the Berserker?_

_I've got it in here with me, just need to kill it,_ Shepard sent.

_Wade just sent the bear to back you up, sir,_ MacTavish replied. _And those two intel spooks are moving up to assist us. _

Shepard heard the Muton rip another piece of machinery loose, and he was moving around the central cylinder when the Berserker came charging around. When the arm pumped, he slowed time again and sprang aside, the hunk of equipment whipping past. Shepard's pistol rose, firing half a dozen shots before he touched back down. He could make out the Berserker's armor heating up from the repeated impacts, the air wavering in watery patterns as plasma splashed off the alien's shields.

The Muton launched itself toward Shepard at full speed, ignoring the shots he kept pouring into its chest and helmet. It brandished the massive shock hammer, swinging it above its head, and at less than five meters' distance, Shepard leapt aside again, right as the hammer started to descend.

The Berserker threw its free hand out at Shepard as he dodged, and the massive fingers closed around his psi-cloak's bottom hem. It yanked hard, snarling in laughter and triumph.

And was left holding the bottom half of the cloak when it popped loose at the Sentinel's waist.

Shepard spun around in midair, correcting for the abrupt pull on his cloak; even designed to break away when grabbed, the Muton put a _lot _of force into it. He hit the floor on his feet and slid away, firing his plasma pistol into the surprised alien's face. It roared, shaking its head again and slamming the disappointing piece of cloth into the floor, and took a step toward Shepard, ignoring the plasma biting into its shields and armor.

Then a pair of enormous bear arms, sheathed in Atlas armor plating and artificial muscle, wrapped around the Muton's considerable midsection from behind. The Berserker managed a single startled grunt before it was abruptly lifted and swung backwards to slam headfirst into the floor.

"That's how we do it on old Earth, _puto_!" James Vega roared, before leaping atop the started Berserker and slamming its helmeted head repeatedly against the floor.

Shepard stared at the display for only an instant, before he dashed forward, toward the Muton's dropped hammer. He leveled his pistol at the hammer's haft and fired several shots where it met the weapon's head. It took four hits to burn through the metal, sending a torrent of sparks and arcing electricity from the weapon before it died. He spun back toward the battling ursa and Berserker.

The latter was recovering from its shock, snarling and grappling with James. It started to push him back with one hand while smashing its meaty armored fist into the bear uplift's face.

"Vega, optics!" Shepard shouted, activating his omnitool and firing another stunned. James' locked down his sensors, and the concussive blast that hit the Muton's head did little to affect him. The Muton screamed in rage, thrashing violently and trying to push James off, but it stopped hitting him, and James was able to pin one of its arms.

Shepard ran up to the battling pair, circling around to the side with the pinned arm, and jammed his pistol through the Berserker's barriers and into its less-armored throat. He pulled the trigger, and plasma erupted. Armor melted. Flesh and cybernetics were incinerated. The Berserker screamed, raw and savage, even as its neck was burned through.

Four point-blank plasma beams to the neck later, the Berserker went still.

* * *

The interior of the battleship was a distorted mirror of the older designs Hercules and his MEC team had trained to assault. The old Ethereal warships had been standardized, theorized to be built by the Temple ships in whatever place it had lurked in before emerging over the Atlantic Ocean. This ship had a broadly similar layout, but the sealed passageways and bulkheads were different. Just like the aliens themselves: familiar but different.

But that was in the back of Hercules' mind. The majority of his attention was, at the moment, occupied with driving a kinetic strike module through a Muton's forehead.

The XCOM mechanized troops were advancing through the corridors of the battleship, but resistance was increasing every moment. Mutons and Sectoids, mostly, with a couple of those Snakeman snipers lurking at the end of hallways. They had yet to encounter any of the Corrupted that Shepard reported on the surface, nor had they encountered any of the other creatures the Ethereals had sent against mankind. No Sectopods, or Floaters, or Chryssalids, thank God.

But what the aliens lacked in heavy firepower or horrifying tank-killing zombie-insects, they made up for in tenacity and ferocious defense. The Mutons and Sectoids set up deadly-effective crossfires and locked down corridors with an endless stream of outgoing plasma fire. Even with the MEC's geth-derived heat-resistant vahlenite plating and tank-grade kinetic barriers, the sheer amount of superheated gas being poured into the XCOM troops was taking its toll. More often than not, Hercules had to launch brutal frontal assaults, hurling his weaker drones into the line of fire so his MECs could push through and gun down the aliens, or if the Muton Phalanxes were in position, close in to take them down with KSMs, flamethrowers, high-frequency blades, or arm-mounted Hacksaw shotguns. The latter weapons pounded a deafening river of vahlenite flechettes into the defenders, ripping apart Muton and Sectoid alike.

The results of those assaults were bloody, at least figuratively. Hercules had lost more than forty percent of his combat capability, much of it in drones. Several MECs had been downed or reduced to combat ineffectiveness, but the majority of his losses had been among the FENRIR, HULU, and ODIN drones.

In the end, though, they were all expendable. Their minds were backed up, and as long as they took the bridge and kept this ship from escaping, losses were down to the expense of replacing their MEC frames and bodies.

Hercules moved his current squad up to one of the glowing forcefield doors the Ethereals liked to put everywhere. Jenkins stood in the doorway, his Shogun's omni-shield deployed and ready to draw the first shots, while the rest of the MECs flanked the doorway. Hercules readied his weapons, and triggered the indicator that unlocked the door. The opaque forcefield melted away.

A screaming, towering Muton hurled itself through the gap, swinging an shock hammer into Jenkins' shield. The barrier shattered in a flash of deafening, blinding explosive force that broke the hammer's head clean off the haft of the weapon. Jenkins recoiled, arm falling limp and spraying sparks and internal fluids from the blow, and the Berserker surged forward.

Hercules intercepted it with a blow from his kinetic strike module, smashing it into one of the Berserker's arms and shattering bone and armor. He crashed into the Muton as it was spun around, and hurled the Berserker to the deck. Two other MECs were unloading into the alien while others surged through the doorway alongside FENRIRs, rushing through incoming plasma fire.

The Berserker was tough, but it had three MECs emptying their guns into its head at point-blank.

"Push forward!" Hercules bellowed over the comm as the Muton's head was liquefied. "They'll run out of bodies before we run out of ammo!"

* * *

The looming, lean suit of powered armor and cybernetically-augmented Sectoid leapt up onto the rooftop of the building opposite the one that the Berserker had chased Shepard into. Unlike the rest of the Ethereals' minions and machinery, the Mechtoid had little that had been obviously changed from the incarnation humanity had fought more than a century ago. Aside from the kinetic barrier wreathing its body and the blue-black paint job that these Ethereals favored, it was the same amalgamation of Sectoid and robotics.

Sarin-Kiris knew this because he was scanning the machine intently and comparing it to the detailed records humanity had shared with its allies. He had immediately moved to engage the Mechtoid when it first teleported in - an action that Saren-Vanis had retroactively approved - but to his surprise the alien disengaged and began moving behind the structures in the climate dome, probably looking for an overwatch position. Kiris had taken precious seconds to reacquire it.

Now the Exo faced the Mechtoid square on, and the alien was raising its weapons the moment it caught sight of the turian war machine.

The rooftop was littered with heavy machinery: cooling and elevation equipment, piping, and secondary sensors on their own heavy masts. It provided a lot of cover, save for the middle of the rooftop, which consisted of a single enormous hatch that covered about half the space on the top of the structure, presumably where the main sensory equipment would be extended during clear weather. It gave a clear line of fire between the two mechanical warriors.

They opened fire at virtually the same, both of the Mechtoid's plasma cannons spraying green fire at Kiris while the Exo sidestepped, weaving behind the machinery on his side of the roof while firing. he didn't bother with the plasma cannon, instead hammering away with his mass accelerator while charging the particle beam. Superheated gas rippled past Kiris, burning through machinery and equipment and sending sprays of white-hot molten metal through the air.

The Mechtoid corrected its aim, ignoring the bullets hammering its barriers. Ghostly blue flashes washed over the Mechtoid as a river of relatively-heavy bullets pounded away, shattering and ricocheting around the augmented Sectoid. Kiris ground his mechanical claws into the rooftop and came to a halt just before a plasma beam slashed past a half a meter ahead of him, and then leapt back behind a dense vertical collection of pipes and sensor masts. The Mechtoid's shots chased him, slamming into and burning through the equipment. Rivulets of molten metal poured down into the rooftop, and the tangle of machinery and piping began to twist and collapse.

The particle gun signaled fully charged.

Kiris sprang out from behind cover, his heavy Exo body weaving and juking among the cover on his side. green beams burned through whatever stood in the way, but he needed only a moment for the particle cannon to swing toward his target and secure a firing solution.

A spear of white destruction erupted from Kiris' shoulder. The Mechtoid saw the cannon swiveling, and wrenched itself aside, but the beam sliced through the alien's left flank and severed that cannon completely, sending it flying aside in a spinning arc. The Mechtoid stumbled back a moment, recovering from the hit.

Kiris was already rushing across the distance between them as it set its feet, and both plasma and kinetic weapons were unleashing torrents of stabilized fire into its barriers. He closed, a vicious rage burning in his processors, something from his original organic body that had never been expunged when he'd made the transition to synthetic construction. Indeed, Kiris had distilled the more brutal elements of his core personality, for his duty was carefully-selected but merciless violence.

He closed, pounding the disoriented Mechtoid before it could fully recover, particle cannon charging again. It would be a race, then, to see whether the conventional weapons, particle cannon, or his own claws would end the Mechtoid.

A green beam lashed down, tight and narrow, and pierced his back left leg, burning through his weakened barriers and slicing into the machinery. The charge abruptly ground to a halt as Kiris recovered from the abrupt loss of one leg. He tracked the shot back with his sensors, but ignored the Snakeman, at least for the moment. He locked his partially-charged particle beam onto the Mechtoid's armored midsection and fired.

The beam pierced the center of the Mechtoid's chest, blasting a gaping hole the size of a human's fist through the midsection. Judging by the position of the alien's head, the shot struck where its heart should be. Sparks burst from the wound, and the Mechtoid slumped in place, limbs slack, and it toppled over to crash to the rooftop.

Kiris whirled on his three good legs, hunting for the Snakeman sniper, weapons tracking its last known position and scanners searching-

A plasma beam cut through the center of Kiris' torso, burning through his core processor. Backups initiated immediately, but for a second he was immobilized, falling sideways before he could regain control of his limbs. Diagnostics and damage reports rolled in, and they weren't good.

_Vanis, Kandros, serious damage to subsystems, _he sent as he scrambled sideways, weapons tracking the origin point of the beam and returning fire. Plasma and kinetic rounds hammered the Snakeman's position.

He saw something fall from the interior of the dome, a serpentine and many-limbed mess, and felt a burst of vicious satisfaction. Kiris ducked into cover, initiating autorepair systems.

_Kiris, are you combat capable?_ Vanis sent, and Kiris ran an analysis. Many internal systems were damaged by the heat of the plasma passing through his core processor, but omnigel units, repair drones, and internal redundancy were dealing with the damage.

_Internal repairs underway. Estimate one minute to reach combat effectiveness._ Kiris replied.

That was when the Corrupted leapt onto the roof.

Kiris swung his weapons to bear, but the long-barreled plasma weapon in the human's hands was already leveled.

_Revise estimate,_ Kiris replied as he opened fire, but he was a half-second after the Corrupted.

A slashing beam of plasma cut through his armor, severing Kiris' head and ripping apart multiple backup processors and power systems.

_Critical damage,_ Kiris messaged as his body toppled to the rooftop._Power disabled._ _Mobility disabled. Weapon systems disabled. Sensors offline. Combat effectiveness is zero._

_Acknowledged, Kiris,_ Saren-Vanis replied. _We will end this._

* * *

_**This is pointless, **_the Ethereal spoke into her mind. Alma responded by hammering it again with another blast of psionic force, which is viciously repelled and countered, another blast of purple light raging over the surging plasma exchange between the XCOM troops and Mutons.

She didn't respond, concentrating as hard as she could and focusing her own power to block the Ethereal's attack. Through the constant struggle, Alma was dimly aware of the others' actions, both from their minds and the tac-net. When Kiris killed the Snakeman, she could hear the echo of its pain and shock, stabbing into her awareness. The Mechtoid's death was oddly hollow, with only a faint burst of pain and none of the emptiness that accompanied an organic's death. When Saren-Kiris himself was destroyed, there was nothing at all.

When the Berserker died, it _screamed_. The impact and gaping silence hammered her where she stood, and the Ethereal was right behind that stunning mental cry, its will locking in and pulsing through her.

_**My patience wears,**_ it said, echoing through her entire nervous system. _**Kneel.**_

Alma pushed back, halting it before it could seize the mind, and threw all of her psionic strength against the alien's will. The Ethereal recoiled, its power withdrawing again, and her counterattack slammed into its defenses, a cascade of purple and red light washing over it.

She could see, just before the Ethereal, the battle between the XCOM and turian team and the Ethereal's bodyguards. Plasma surged back and forth between the XCOM troops and the five-alien pack of Mutons holding the middle of the climate dome, shielding the Ethereal in the center. The two Intelligence agents, Brutus and Tam, were moving into the dome, and the former immediately spun and snapped his carbine up to fire at a target overhead. Pain and surprise burst into Alma's awareness, and the second Snakeman tumbled from the ceiling. Alma pushed through the pain and drove her attack home.

_I'll kneel on your charred corpse,_ she thought, and sudden rage echoed back from the Ethereal.

_**Enough,**_ it said, pushing her back and dissipating her assault. Alma steeled herself. Purple energy rippled from the Ethereal's helmet and fingertips and lashed out, and she braced for the psionic assault.

A Muton corpse slammed into her an instant later.

Alma let out a yelp of surprise as the massive pile of dead alien and scorched armor buried her under its bulk. Fluids oozed down from a helmet that had been split apart by high-explosive rounds, smearing onto her psi-cloak. The immense weight of the Muton pressed down on her, most of its bulk pinning her legs to the rain-slick walkway. Fortunately, her armor kept the corpse's mass from pressing directly on her chest, so she had no trouble breathing.

_**This contest wastes our time,**_ it said, but Alma ignored it, pushing up against the body with armor-assisted strength. The Muton corpse shifted, but only slightly, so she instead focused her own power to lift the body off her.

And as she did so, she sensed the Ethereal marshalling its own strength, and a spike of panic shot through her. She wrapped her power around the corpse and hurled it away, lifting the massive alien and chucking it off the side of the walkway. As she sat up, Alma could feel the psionic power lashing out.

And she heard one of the human soldiers scream, but only for a moment.

* * *

MacTavish was barking orders to his trio of remaining soldiers, who were crouched just ahead of him, taking cover along the corners of the buildings just past the entry to the dome and trading fire with the Muton bodyguards. Thus he was in good position to see the psionic energy lance out and strike one of his troopers in the head, wrapping his helmet in a violet haze. He then spun, leveled his weapon at the trooper next to him, and pulled the trigger before the soldier could do more than jerk in shock.

Nothing happened.

There was a distinctive electrical pattern in a psionically-controlled human's brain. Coupled with the energy signature of a psionic attack, it created an obvious indicator of hostile mind control, which a properly-equipped helmet could detect and respond to. Numerous countermeasures had been proposed over the decades, ranging from armor lockdown to immediate sedative release, but most were discarded simply because they presented new avenues of attack via electronic warfare. XCOM had compromised between security and defense against psionic attack with an automatic suit-linked weapon lockdown triggered when the mind-control pattern was detected.

The Ethereal-controlled soldier pulled the trigger on his weapon twice before the soldier he was aiming at deployed his arc-thrower blades from his gauntlet. The controlled soldier took a swift step back, throwing aside his weapon, and yanked his high-frequency knife from his belt.

"Stun him!" MacTavish barked, but the controlled soldier thumbed the blade to active and slashed it across his own throat. The psychic light vanished immediately, and the man fell to the ground, thrashing and spraying blood.

MacTavish bolted forward toward the dying trooper, but plasma fire hammered his shields and lit up his armor. Snarling, he ran through the Mutons' shots, grabbing the stricken soldier and dragging him back to cover.

Medical diagnostics told him he was too late. The HF blade tore so deep it nearly decapitated the soldier. He was already dead by the time MacTavish had dragged the body to safety.

Then a torrent of red and white and purple psionic violence surged overhead and into the Ethereal, accompanied by an enraged scream from Alma.

* * *

"Up here," Alison said, and then leapt straight up to the rooftop of the building where Kiris had been destroyed. Hunks of ruined metal lay scattered across the rooftop, glowing red and yellow from where plasma had melted through. She swept the rooftop with her fusion rifle while Garrus landed next to her, carbine shouldered.

He immediately dove aside to his right, and she sprang in the opposite direction, while they both transmitted to each other the location of the Corrupted. An eyeblink later a scythe of plasma sliced through the air, bisecting more climate sensors and sending them crashing to the rooftop.

The two synthetic agents came up with weapons ready and tracking the Corrupted, the twisted human bolting among the cover on the far side of the roof. Alison's fusion rifle finished its one-second charge and fired, a spray of violence washing over the Corrupted's path and burning through cover. It shifted direction even as she fired, leaping backward and aiming with its long-barreled rifle in mid-air. Alison tracked its barrel and immediately rolled aside, barely evading another slashing beam that burned through the rooftop where she'd been crouched.

_Some action vid bullshit right there,_ she messaged Garrus.

In response, he put a round through the barrel of the plasma weapon, shearing it in half and generating a burst of superheated gas.

_Show off,_ she sent, tracking the Corrupted as it flipped over in mid-air smoke rising from scorched armor plate.

_I was aiming for its head, _Garrus admitted. Alison snorted a laugh, standing up and chasing after the Corrupted.

_Stay close,_ she sent to Garrus, who moved up behind her as they advanced into the slightly-less damaged mess of sensor masts and piping on the other end of the roof. _Just like Chen, or whatever the hell he was called. I don't have my shield this time._

Garrus sent a wordless acknowledgement, carbine ready. Alison launched microdrones to scan the tangle of equipment as the moved forward. They began mapping the half-molten tangle of wreckage and climatology gear.

They spotted the Corrupted right as it dropped down from overhead, a high-frequency blade shearing through metal as it arced down. Alison and Garrus fired at the same time, plasma burning off the Corrupted's left arm and a gutshot blowing out the human's lower back.

The wounds were almost certainly fatal, but they didn't stop the HF blade from flashing down and cutting clean through Alison's neck. A flash of sparks erupted from her armor and endoskeleton, and the head went flying. Her fusion rifle tumbled from loose fingers.

Then Alison's gun hand balled into a fist and shot up into the Corrupted's throat. It impacted with a meaty _crunch_, and the twisted human stumbled back in shock and confusion.

Garrus put a single round through its faceplate, and it toppled to the rooftop.

_Goddammit, this is getting annoying,_ Alison messaged, twisting her body around so her suit cameras could see where her head had rolled to. _Primary optical systems were in there._

_Can you still fight?_ Garrus asked. In response she picked up her head and clipped the helmet to her belt, and then scooped up her fusion rifle.

_Awkward, but I can keep going,_ she replied.

* * *

The entry to the battleship's bridge was guarded by no less than four Mutons: two of the Elite variants with their heavy plasma cannons and a pair of Phalanxes. They stood outside the corridor leading to the command center, weapons at the ready for the oncoming XCOM invaders.

They heard approaching footsteps, and readied weapons, plasma hot and prepared to fire over the shoulders of the shield-bearing Phalanxes. Eager, hungry rage and anticipation simmered, awaiting battle.

They were almost disappointed when another Muton appeared at the end of the hallway, running toward them, clutching a light plasma rifle - an indicator of low rank within their bloody hierarchy. One of the Elites grunted a query to the new arrival, and gestured for it to move into a position on the defensive line.

The new arrival replied by rolling a grenade under the shieldwall.

The next few seconds were pure chaos. Screams, roars, shouts in the Mutons' stunted, violence-laden language, and copious plasma fire, intermixed with brief flashes of red. The Elites found themselves shooting randomly at each other, bashing with their shields or armored fists, and the corridor swiftly stank of cooked flesh, molten metal, and spilled alien blood.

One Elite remained standing for a moment, covered in the blood of its companions, before straightening, reloading its weapon, and turning to walk down the hallway to the door the new arrival had arrived from.

In an alcove beside the door lay the limp body of Paxton Fettel. The Elite picked him up and carried him in one hand back to the bridge door and set it in a safe spot out of the line of fire, before triggering the door access.

Paxton Fettel rushed into the doorway and peered around the bridge. The squarish room beyond consisted of two tiers: a lower level with a couple of rows of holographic consoles, manned by armored Sectoids, and a wide stairway leading to an upper level where an Ethereal floated, watching a holographic display of the battle raging both overhead and below. It had no bodyguards, which was curious. Unless... perhaps he was currently possessing the guard that should have been standing by its side?

The Sectoids did not even look up as he stomped past them, engrossed in controlling the battleship and fighting the legion of FAFNIR drones that were hammering it. Had they not heard the sounds of violence just outside? Then again, the aliens seemed to be remarkably easily distracted….

Fettel strode past and up the steps toward the Ethereal.

He got within three meters before the blue-robed alien's attention turned to him, and Fettel knew instantly that he had been identified by the shock in the Ethereal's emotions, transmitted through its aura of power. The alien whirled on him, raising its arms and floating backward in sudden alarm, psychic power gathering to defend itself as it realized just what was approaching.

Fettel rushed forward, and the Muton body screamed in involuntary bloodlust. He activated the bandoleer of grenades he carried and leapt at the Elite's master, even as the Ethereal's power lashed out and began burning through the Muton's nervous system. There was a flash of green and abrupt heat-

He opened his eyes, back in his own body, and leapt to his feet. He rushed into the bridge, in time to see the Sectoids scrambling in surprise and confusion. He didn't bother possessing any of them, instead lashing out with mindfray blasts, smashing through their nervous systems and ripping them apart with raw, violent energy.

Fettel killed more than half of them before the confused aliens realized the threat. They turned to start shooting, but Fettel extended a hand toward the incoming plasma, and the green fire halted in mid-air, caught and held by his will. Another effort, and the plasma surged back toward the Sectoids. Most of them scrambled to safety, but one was burned down where it stood.

The Ethereal's flesh had taught him much.

Another emerged, and Fettel sensed the psychic power within the creature. It lashed out, striking at him with a mindfray of its own, but Fettel found the attack… wanting. The feeble psychic assault impacted against his own will and dissipated.

His counter breached its defenses and smote the alien's nervous system, ripping it asunder and leaving a lifeless, twitching corpse upon the deck.

The remaining few Sectoids lasted less than a minute. He walked among them, striking them down and hurling their own plasma back at them. They did not waver, falling back and continuing to fight, but it mattered little. Soon enough, the bridge was still.

Fettl walked up to the second level of the bridge. One of the projectors was a scorched ruin, and pieces of dead Muton littered the floor. The burt, gasping body of the Ethereal commanding the battleship lay slumped in a corner, hemet and mantle twisted and half-molten, its robes scorched tatters clinging to charred flesh. Purple light leaked from its body, and the helmet turned toward him as he approached.

_This is not your path, New One,_ it spoke to him, its voice weak and weary. But there was an edge to it. A sense of… vindictiveness.

_You reject ascension,_ it continued as Fettel approached, drawing his knife. _You should stay blind. Crawl in your muck, ignorant to what we face. To why we sought to elevate your filthy, treacherous breed._

"I know what you face," Fettel replied, jamming his knife into a seam in the metal. He twisted.

_Through our flesh. Stolen memories,_ the Ethereal whispered into his consciousness.

"Glimpses, yes," Fettel replied, and tore off the front of the helmet, exposing the burnt flesh of the Ethereal's ruined face. Its four eyes still glowed with a cold blue light.

"The living metal," he said, and began cutting. Purple light spilled from the body, but the Ethereal kept staring at him with cold, baleful eyes.

_May it consume you all,_ it spoke, and went silent.

The glow faded, and Fettel tore fresh meat free.

* * *

Alma caught the sudden spike of terror from the Ethereal, even as she assaulted it with everything she had. The scream of death and pain and the vast hollow emptiness told her what motivated the alien. Somehow, the third Ethereal on the battleship was dead. XCOM must have taken the bridge.

_**THIS ENDS.**_

It reached out, snatching another soldier's mind while fending off her attacks. The soldier screamed, and MacTavish leapt at him, striking him with his arc-thrower. The lightning danced over his body, but it wasn't enough. The soldier drew his knife and slashed it through his neck, just like the last one.

_**WITHDRAW NOW, AND NO MORE DIE!**_

A Muton fell, pulled from cover by Saren-Vanis and shot down by both himself and Kandros. Alma gathered herself for another strike and hammered the Ethereal again with pure desperation. She felt, for a moment, a grasp on its thoughts and body, but it forced her away again. Purple light flashed toward MacTavish as he fired on the other Mutons.

"Fuck off and die, ya sack of arselicks!" he screamed back, and the Ethereal's fury doubled over as its power failed to seize the enraged Scot. More gunfire roared down from overhead, kinetic and plasma washing directly over the Ethereal's psionic barriers.

Its helmet turned up, toward the Intelligence agents shooting at it - one of whom was missing her head.

_Hardcore synthetics,_ Alma thought, and hammered the Ethereal again. Its anger grew even hotter, and the alien struck back, catching a burst of plasma from a fusion rifle in its psychic grip and hurling the superheated gas back. The two synthetics ducked for cover.

Why wouldn't this Ethereal just die? She assaulted it again, another river of red-tinged psionic power washing over the alien, but again it pushed back, breaking apart the attack.

_**You are an insect, Alma Wade.**_

She blinked in shock, and it struck back, a tremendously powerful surge of psychic energy, tearing at her mind. No mind-control attempt either, but a brutal assault on her nervous system. She screamed, pushing back, driving the attack away with everything she had.

And in the process, she felt heat, deep down. Familiar heat, bringing back memories of a school, a classroom, and raging, uncontrolled _power._

_Oh no._

There was an abrupt howl of plasma fire, the crash of destroyed metal and concrete, and an animal roar. Alma looked up, through eyes blurry with tears from the sudden pain and heat.

The towering sight of James Vega stood in the middle of the Mutons, his plasma cannon firing at point blank into the back of a bodyguard's head, burning clean off. A gaping hole in one of the climate buildings loomed behind him. A blur rippled past the ursa, leaping up and bouncing off the wall opposite the hole in the building, and Alma caught a flare of what looked like blue fire as it whipped toward another Muton. Then the alien was knocked clear off its feet, its facemask flying away and ash-colored gas flying from shattered atmospheric processors.

The blur hit the ground, and resolved into the form of Major Shepard, standing before the Ethereal, which loomed overhead with purple violence surging around its body.

The heat kept building up within Alma, white hot and destructive, clawing for release.

The last bodyguard turned toward Shepard, and screamed in rage, raising its plasma rifle, but then it was seized in another burst of altered gravity, pulled back toward Saren. The turian Spectre strode past and calmly shot the Muton in the head without breaking stride.

The heat burned up through her, demanding release, uncontrolled. An apocalypse raging under her skin.

There was a reason they called it "going nova."

PsiCorps had taught her how to control it, to minimize the damage. She desperately opened a channel to Shepard as the overload of raw psionic violence clawed its way loose and exploded outward.

* * *

Shepard stared up at the Ethereal, whose raw psionic power pressed down on his senses, ready to crush him beneath its heel.

He'd killed the entire Batarian Hegemony as a teenager. This psionic bully didn't scare him.

"This is your only chance to surrender," Shepard spoke. "I heard the second Ethereal's death-scream. Your battleship is ours. Your bodyguards are dead. You're surrounded. And we have a bear."

"Sup, hombre," Vega rumbled.

The Ethereal glared down, rage and contempt echoing in its sheer psionic presence. Then it spoke, directly into his mind.

_**You are Adam Shepard. Major. Sentinel. XCOM.**_ That last thought dripped with equal parts hatred and respect. _**Your history is known. Your potential is wasted.**_

"No monologuing," Shepard spoke, clear and commanding.. "Surrender or get buried."

_**I can crush you with a thought,**_ it replied. _**You should kneel to-**_

_MAJOR GOING NOVA TARGET ETHEREAL_

Shepard's eyes widened at Alma's message, and the Ethereal's head snapped up to look past him, going completely still in a manner oddly similar to someone just now realizing they were about to be crushed by a falling space station.

"COVER!" Shepard screamed, slowing and bolting toward the hole in the building. He dashed through the doorway, spinning around in time to see Saren and Vega slowly jumping into the room as well. Brutus and Tam's markers were dashing toward the other side of their building, while MacTavish and Kandros were running out of the way as quickly as possible, clearing a path between Alma and the Ethereal.

Alma screamed, a cry that went beyond the audible, and a torrent of psychic energy blasted toward the Ethereal, purple and crimson and pure white. The Ethereal hurled its own power against the fury of one of the most powerful known human psychics going nova. The two powerhouses met, and Shepard saw concrete and metal begin to actually disintegrate around the alien as it held Alma back.

Metal groaned, twisting and forming. Shepard shouted over the command sent messages to get clear, and they retreated further, scrambling over debris and through the building. The Ethereal began to scream, furious and desperate. Outside, the rain began to twist in midair, swirling around the climate dome in a miniature hurricane. FAFNIR drones were violently buffeted, several crashing into the battleship. An agonizing pulling and tearing sensation ran through Shepard, dragging him back toward the Ethereal.

There was a blinding pulse of white, and Shepard heard the scream abruptly end. Rain blasted away, crashing atop the dome, and FAFNIRS flew out of control for a couple of seconds before correcting.

Then, silence.

* * *

The Ethereal battleship was quiet.

One the one hand, Hercules preferred it that way. His losses had been heavy, and though none permanent, he had few MECs remaining to complete the mission. Prior to the development of mind backups and cortical stacks, he would have long since scrubbed this raid, and started calling in fusion lances. His team now consisted of himself, Faultline, and a badly-battered Jenkins, who was now definitely in line for both a promotion and a good nickname.

Before, the Ethereals' minions had fought tooth and nail for every room. Now, the corridors were empty of anything alive, save his MECs, and that was a bit unnerving. They had started walking over the corpses of slaughtered aliens, most of whom had died to close-range plasma fire or explosives. A number of them, mostly Sectoids, had also been killed by mindfray attacks, judging by the fluids oozing out of their armor and the lack of obvious wounds.

They had a hell of a psychic rampaging through the ship, and going by the briefing, there was only one possibility.

The passage to the bridge was littered in dead bodies, including a defensive point where the Mutons had obviously started beating each other to death with their bare hands and shields. The trio of MEC troopers stepped over the bodies and paused outside the bridge. They readied weapons, and Hercules opened the door.

The MEC team piled into the room, weapons raised and ready fire.

Sectoids littered the bridge. Consoles were scorched and broken, and the top level was burnt severely, most of its equipment destroyed.

Paxton Fettel sat at the top of the stairs leading to the second level, his coat, fingers, and lower face splattered in alien blood.

Hercules advanced slowly, Faultline and Jenkins spreading out to either side, keeping Fettel in their sights while microdrones scouted the room for any surprises. The psychic's mouth began to split into a grin as they reached the base of the stairs.

"I was wondering when you would finally arrive," he rasped.

"Paxton Fettel," Hercules said. "Sergeant Hansen, XCOM."

"You are here to bring me into custody," Fettel said. There was a mechanical rumble as Hansen shrugged his MEC's shoulders.

"We're here to secure this ship, but standing orders are to bring you in," Hansen replied. "You neutralized the crew, I'm assuming."

"My original plan was to attempt to hijack this vessel," Fettel said, his tone whimsical. "The Ethereals, of course, utterly crushed me when I attempted. I was quite the fool at that point."

He chuckled.

"But I adapted. Swiftly, much to their chagrin and horror. Once I boarded, I intended to seize control and escape the system. Free. Unchained."

He leaned forward a bit, and his smile faded a bit.

"But then I became…. enlightened."

He slowly rose, and spread his arms out.

"And this vessel is far too complicated to pilot on its own, even in my illuminated state."

A faint rumble ran through the battleship. Fettel's grin returned.

"Case in point. But I ramble. What you need to hear now is..."

Fettel titled his arms up at the elbow.

"I surrender."

Hercules lowered his particle gun, but only a hair.

_Masamune, we have Fettel. We need psi-containment here immediately._

_Acknowledged, Hercules,_ came the reply. _Deploying containment team now._

The rumbling resumed, louder and more violent.

"Plasma containment is failing," Fettel said. "Regrettably, this ship appears to be unable to remain functional without an Ethereal controlling it. I simply don't have the expertise or…"

He glanced to the corpses littering the room.

"Personnel…to maintain operations. I've stepped down the elerium reactors, so no megaton detonations, but I suspect the ship's own plasma stores may begin to violently rupture. Breakup will ensue shortly. I estimate nine minutes before the battleship falls apart and drops into the ocean thanks to this soft self-destruct system."

Dammit. Intelligence and R&amp;D were going to be _pissed._

"And you're the only one who has intel recovered from the Ethereals," Hercules growled.

"A fascinating coincidence, indeed," Fettel replied, starting down the steps toward them. "We should depart swiftly."

_All MEC units, scrub current operations,_ Hercules messaged, glaring at Fettel. _Grab any artifacts or storage drives in your immediate vicinity and move to evacuation rally points. The ship is going to self destruct in eight minutes._

"Stay in front of us," Hercules said as Fettel approached. They kept their weapons trained on him out of principle as they hurried out of the bridge. Fettel said nothing, instead maintaining his grin the entire way.

Hercules felt a very strong urge to just shoot Fettel in the head, but he resisted.

* * *

Alma had crushed the Ethereal. Literally.

Its already slender, emaciated body had been pounded to virtual mush, the bones in its limbs powder-fractured and skull smashed to a quarter of its size and its helm not much larger. If it weren't for its robes, the body wouldn't have been recognizable.

For good measure she'd also reduced the inorganic material in a five-meter radius surrounding the Ethereal to either twisted metal or powder. Sections of the complex leading toward the Ethereal, both walls and floors, were ripped and twisted, reshaped like crashing ocean waves abruptly turned to steel or concrete. The walkway outside had bent into flaring spikes jutting away from where she stood, making approaching her treacherous.

She was sitting in the middle of the reshaped metal, shivering, black hair loose and wet in the downpour. Her helmet and psi-cloak were gone, and the purple lines of the built-in psionic control systems on her armor were blown out. Bits of dark metal were embedded in the walls of the sheds nearby, all that remained of her helmet.

When one went nova, nothing held back one's power. Anything that got in the way was destroyed.

There was a distant rumble, and a flash of green light. Shepard looked up toward the battleship, which was drifting uncontrollably out toward the ocean. A section had just been engulfed in plasma, burning apart sections of massive ship.

Goddamn waste. But he didn't need to reflect on that right now. _Masamune_ had sent him an update: Fettel had surrendered and was being taken into custody. Mission accomplished.

"Hey. Lieutenant," Shepard said crouching in front of her. She looked up, meeting his eyes, and her own irises glowed like molten gold.

He held a hand toward her and smiled.

"Good job," he said.

White light washed over them, and the roar of engines filled the air. He looked up, hear the whine of Zephyr flight suits and slightly deeper rumble of mass-effect assisted personal jetpacks. XCOM soldiers were landing on the rooftops all around them, Voidrangers shining spotlights through the rain and darkness.

Her fingers wrapped around his, and looked back toward her. She's stopped shaking, and her lips were pressed together in firm certainty.

"Thank you, sir," she said with a nod.

He pulled her to her feet, and then stepped out of the twisted metal wreckage and began barking orders to the XCOM troops. The battleship continued to fall apart in the distance, chunks raining into the ocean, and more Voidrangers were descending, deploying teams to secure the site and sweep for survivors.

"Damn," He muttered as he suddenly realized something.

"Sir?" Alma asked. Shepard shook his head.

"Garm's gonna be _pissed _that he missed this."

* * *

_**Author's Notes: **_ That's the end of the first story arc. I plan to write an epilogue/interlude chapter and maybe write a codex entry chapter to deal with a lot of the esoteric bits of technology and setting.


	14. Twelve: Cleanup

The Shadow Broker sat behind her desk on the vessel that served as her nerve center, still chasing the border of day and night on Hagalaz, a hundred high-capacity leads running from her head, neck, and spine and into the computer ports surrounding her.

The interior of the Broker's vessel had been remodeled from the cold, functional utilitarian steel that her predecessor had maintained. Now the floors, ceiling, and walls were a polished white with black trim, along with periodic blue and red lines, trim, and circles. More than a few of her forks had developed quite the artistic bent, as well as more than a fair amount of nostalgia for their…. childhood. When reintegration and split-off had occurred, this remodeling of the former Broker's ship had been one of the inevitable results.

The Broker left it. A collective consciousness like the one they fostered needed expression and dissent, with elements pursuing individual agendas. Otherwise, she argued, they would end up like the geth: trapped in a recursive memory of their most traumatic experiences, endlessly retransmitted and relived, unable to develop into a paradigm that existed outside of that trauma.

By now the Broker's vessel was crewed by hundreds of her. At any point more than half of them were directly slotted into the ship's systems, either controlling the enormous atmospheric cruiser or processing the endless oceans of information they were gathering. The others were largely engaged in non-Broker-related pursuits, with much of the ship's interior given over to research, study, or recreational facilities. The previous Broker had been very utilitarian, but had left significant amounts of space within the ship unused.

All work and no play led to a Broker who was abruptly murdered by an army of synthetic killing machines.

Sorting through all of the information she was receiving was tiring, on an intellectual level; the Broker planned to let another fork take over the Prime position soon and continue directing policy. But not yet.

She had to make sure they'd managed the fallout from Proteus properly. The first step was to know what everyone else was doing in response.

Some discussions were in the open. Some were hidden in dark places. And it was in the shadows that the most interesting and crucial facts lay.

**_Chapter Twelve: Cleanup_**

"Proteus was a disaster."

And with those words, furious arguments erupted, of the kind that would never happen with such esteemed company in real life.

The simulspace environment was a dark, elongated room, walled with reflective black metal panels. Blank-faced, androgynous avatars sat at the round, black-topped table in the middle of the chamber, identified only by numbers hovering over their heads. The room was lit on one side by a distant, roiling red giant, its height just barely contained by the enormous bay window.

It was all terribly cliche, but after all these years on the Board, Jack Harper had become accustomed to it. They loved their conspiracy games, the belief that they were the puppetmasters, rather than the fact that they were as often scrambling to keep their schemes afloat. That power politics and corporate profits _mattered._

But that was his job: To clean up their mistakes so they could live in their fiction of power.

He slowly took a drag of the simulated cigarette, inhaling the rich, simulated aroma of its smoke and breathing it back out. None of the others were doing anything of the sort; their avatars were too busy pointing fingers and yelling at the top of their lungs.

"Gentlemen."

He didn't speak loudly, but his personal security override and authority made those words cut over and mute out the others' arguments. The avatars went quiet, turning toward him.

"Under normal circumstances, I would have already dispatched Vanek and his cleanup teams to sanitize the environment, but our mutual enemies have ensured the situation is already past that point."

He took another drag on the cigarette.

"No amount of industrial accidents or deleted backups will make this go away," Harper continued. "We will have to step u our response past the normal emergency procedures we're so familiar with."

He held up a hand at several vocal objections, and his his satisfaction that they obeyed. Some of these men commanded worlds, but at a gesture he silenced them like schoolchildren.

"That isn't to say that I'm not in the process of cleanup," he continued. "Vanek and Marburg are right now pulling and deleting every backup of the personnel on the Proteus site, and we've initiated all cut outs. Scrubbed backups are being activated. But it won't be enough.

"This fuck-up involved Ethereals, and something _else_, going by the research notes," Harper continued. "XCOM, STG, and every other intelligence and investigative agency will come down on us. Even CRS might be involved in our financials."

Everyone shivered at that thought. There were fewer things more terrifying to a corporate officer than a salarian accountant.

"Which is why we're setting up free targets. Someone has to go into the recycling vats. Marshall Disler is the obvious choice, and I've already got Marburg deleting his backups and prepping a scrubbed ego to throw at XCOM. That should buy us enough time to liquidate all data and memory linking back to higher command. Vanek is purging the Antaeus facility and severing all links between that complex and the Proteus base."

"What about Paxton Fettel?" one of the avatars asked. "He has not been accounted for."

"Fettel is a maximum priority target," Harper replied with a grim nod. "And he is almost certainly targeting leadership and decision-makers. But I have assets in play tracking him now. Once we find him, I'll contact our friend Mr. Irons to terminate him."

He didn't tell them that XCOM had taken him into custody. They didn't need to know that pants-shitting fact just yet. At least Irons and his private army had no qualms with executing operations on government targets, even XCOM. EXALT made for a convenient scapegoat in those circumstances.

"By this time tomorrow," Harper assured his clients, "Proteus will be a rogue operation, carried out by overly ambitious SDC officers and ATC personnel acting completely outside the bounds of their orders. There will be no connection to any of you."

* * *

Admiral Stephen Hackett sat at the head of the table in the _Masamune's_ simulspace briefing environment, waiting for the rest of the personnel to log in and their avatars to appear. While they did so, he checked the carrier's sensors and the generally-directed chaos across the system.

Military presence in the system had doubled. His own Strike Seven had been augmented by Strike Three-Bravo and Strike Eight-Delta. The PPA and SDC had sent several additional squadrons each, and were warily securing their halves of the planet. A turian patrol had arrived to assist, and even a geth cruiser squadron had come, arriving within less than an hour of the CCS alert.

The majority of the ships were performing an exhaustive, overlapping sensor sweep of the Proteus itself, hunting for any other Ethereal presence, while the remainder either patrolled over the planet or were sweeping the other worlds in the system for enemy presence. A fool's errand, really, considering how much there was to search. The geth had thrown themselves into assisting with the recovery of the destroyed battleship.

The last of the officers, Intel agents, and R&amp;D personnel had appeared and taken their seats, most of them wearing their generic military avatars or anonymous blank forms. Hackett locked down the environment and started the meeting.

"Alright, let's get started on our findings so far," he said. "Merkett, recovery?"

"Most of the easily-recovered parts of the battleship are in orbit now," said Captain Merkett, head of the recovery effort. His avatar was broad-shouldered and squat, matching the plug of a man he was in reality. "Unfortunately, significant parts sank below normal crush depth. We've got colonial specialists and geth working on the recovery effort. A lot of it has been mangled pretty badly, though, both from the battle and the self-destruct sequence."

"In your opinion, it was a self-destruct sequence?" Hackett asked, and Merkett nodded.

"I've had my infomorphs reconstructing the battleship's structure from sensor records and the remains. The plasma burned through just the right structural components to break apart the ship," he said. "Could have been designed to go off when the Ethereal died, or someone triggered it deliberately. Unknown at this point."

Hackett frowned but nodded. When he was arrested by Sergeant Hansen's MEC team, Fettel had claimed that he'd lost control of the ship's systems. Few of the command staff believed his sincerity, especially since the ship's destruction turned him into their most valuable intelligence asset.

"What about personal technology?" Hackett asked.

"Much better overall," Merkett replied. "We have intact examples of all of the armor and gear of the enemy ground troops, save their weapons. Self-destruct modes abound, it seems."

"What do we know about their technology?" Hackett asked. "They had a number of surprises this time."

"Warship design and personal technology appears to have incorporated mass effect cores," Merkett said. "Unfortunately, plasma damage and seawater have wrecked a lot of what we could recover from the battleship. Infantry technology is upgraded from the older designs across the board. More heat-resistant composition, heavier plating overall, element zero systems to generate kinetic barriers. Most interesting is the hammer that the Berserker was carrying."

Merkett waved a hand, and a diagram appeared of the shock hammer. The hammerhead was apparently hollow, and had what looked like a mass effect core in the center.

"Despite the damage Major Shepard inflicted on this weapon, we were able to determine that it utilizes an element zero core to alter its mass, with a power generator built into the haft to create electrical bursts on impact. I've seen a similar but more crude design in krogan melee weaponry.

"Beyond this, " Merkett continued, "Ethereal weaponry appears to be more rugged. Recognizable components from their weapons actually survived the self-destruct process, unlike the barely-viable fragments from the weapons we recovered before. They're stronger, heavier, and have a greater power output. Armor is stronger and more resistant to heat, and with kinetic barriers they can withstand far greater plasma. In effect, they take what made the geth a problem when we fought them and multiply it tenfold."

Hackett nodded. No, they couldn't really expect the Ethereals to never evolve or develop new weapons and tactics. Kinetic barriers had forced XCOM and humanity to reconsider their own equipment, but this was going to further shake matters up. They would likely have to start relying on weapons better suited to defeating kinetic barriers, like mass accelerators and lasers.

"What about the aliens themselves?" Hackett asked, turning to Doctor Sun. "What's different about this group?"

"Aside from the… _two_… new species," Sun said, "There's a broader range of cybernetic modifications among their rank and file."

The older doctor waved a hand and autopsy images appeared of both Muton and Sectoid bodies. Three-dimensional stills of cadavers appeared, displaying both internal body structure and examples of cybernetic components extracted from the bodies.

"Broadly speaking, the Muton and Sectoid specimens matched what we're familiar with. We're still running genetics, but autopsies showed that there were some additional cybernetic upgrades. The Sectoids had muscle-enhancing implants and strengthened bone structures. This, coupled with their armor - roughly comparable to medium carapace - makes them significantly more durable, although no match for our own soldiers one-on-one.

"The Mutons were similarly upgraded as well, particularly in their forearms and backs, along their spinal columns. Phalanx variants seem to have even more upper body strength than their other compatriots. The Berserker specimen is almost completely unchanged from the original design, beyond some tweaking to its cognitive center, likely to make it smarter. In fact, all of the Mutons appear to have received some augmentations to their cognitive capacity."

He moved the three-dimensional images aside to show a disassembled Seeker wreck.

"Seeker design matches the previous models closely. A larger power core, likely to help them maintain cloak for a prolonged period, was the only modification we discovered."

The Seeker remains were pushed aside, replaced with the two crumpled, almost pathetic-looking remains of the Ethereals, and next to them were the autopsy reports.

"The Ethereal bodies were in… non-ideal shape for a proper autopsy, although historically they required enormous force to properly neutralize regardless. What we have recovered indicated a modest attempt to strengthen the existing bodies with cybernetic augmentation of the backbone and limbs. We theorize they avoided extensive modification because of possible interference with their psionic potential.

"One body was thoroughly crushed by the actions of Lieutenant Alma Wade, while the other was wounded by high-powered close-range plasma detonations and then finished with what appear to be several knife wounds. Significant sections of its brain and meat around the throat were sliced free, and partial mastication indicates that the Ethereal's flesh was eaten. Mastication is consistent with human dental patterns. We are quite certain that Paxton Fettel was responsible."

Sun moved those images aside, and brought up the autopsies and corpses of the serpentine aliens.

"The 'Snakeman,'" Sun said. "This species is completely new, although initial genetic testing leads me to suspect it is the same species as the Thin Men we fought so long ago. This species is obviously reptilian in nature, with an extremely muscular lower body. It does not appear to have much upper body strength, due to the flexibility of its spine not offering the support that would be available in a humanoid design, which is why they appear to use three or four limbs to hold their weaponry. The quartet of limbs have the same rough structure as the spine, making them very flexible and maneuverable.

"This species is exceedingly agile and swift, with well-developed eyesight and cognitive capacity. The camouflage systems appear to be a cybernetically augmented into their flesh, along with some form of dermal armor to protect them from enemy fire, in lieu of actual body armor. They have multiple eyes, and what may be other embedded sensory apparatus, making them effective in a scout-sniper role.

"Finally," Sun said, and paused for a moment. "We have the Corrupted."

The Snakemen corpses were pushed aside to show both the armored bodies and the dissected corpses of the Corrupted. If there was any doubt about Shepard's report, the pale-skinned, mostly hairless, but unquestionably human bodies confirmed it.

"My team was understandably focused on studying this first, and we have confirmed through genetic testing that these are indeed human bodies," Sun said. "Testing has also confirmed that these humans are all clones of each other. Internal bodily structure closely resembles our own optimized military morphs, particularly olympian and fury models. Analysis of neural tissue, particularly what brain matter we were able to recover - less than I would prefer, considering all the specimens suffered lethal cranial trauma - indicates that all of these specimens were Gifted to a modest degree. Curiously, we found almost no evidence of genetic tampering, but there was significant post-birth augmentation to nearly every bodily organ, primarily in the musculature. There appears to have been some effort at specialization as well."

"What do you mean, Doctor?" Hackett asked.

"Well, three of the Corrupted had the same augmentations. Near-exact. factory-produced, with deviations that likely came about naturally over the Corrupted's lifespan. Essentially, not too dissimilar from Replica, or mass-produced olympian morph. They were modified for greatly increased agility or dexterity. The fourth one appeared to have distinctly different augmentations to the musculature and bone structure, suitable for carrying a heavy weapon and holding it steady..

"Their armor appears to have been designed to augment this capacity. It is actually quite similar in basic principles to the current-gen Archon psionic suits, although much more sophisticated. Artificial muscle, direct neural interface, elerium threading to boost psionic capability.

"There is a fifth specimen which we are including as one of the Corrupted," Sun added, and brought up an autopsy report and pictures of an otherwise ordinary-looking human, with annotations in translated Mandarin. "This Ethereal infiltrator was killed by Paxton Fettel on Xin Hengsha. The medical examiners conducted an autopsy and concluded that he was a perfectly ordinary human being, with typical build, health, and minimal augmentations. He would have passed a security scan at any public space station or colony in the galaxy. Minor augmentations in the brain, but well within typical legal boundaries. As always, the specifics are in the autopsy report."

Hackett's frown deepened. This was… a departure from conventional Ethereal behavior, as far as they had ever learned. Every example of Ethereal-modified biology indicated massive genetic and cybernetic changes to seek... whatever it was that they had been after. That there were so few changes made to the human form, especially compared to the honestly-horrific transformations of creatures like the Floaters was disturbing in its own way.

Had the Ethereals achieved their original goals when they attacked Earth, despite humanity's best efforts?

"Thank you, Doctor," he said, and turned to the Intelligence contingent. "Now. What did these Ethereals want?"

"Their objective," Captain Hasham said, "appeared to have been extracting psionic humans from the SDC lab on Proteus. In addition, the Ethereals fixated heavily on Lieutenant Wade when they became aware of her presence. This focus on Gifted humans is consistent with the behavior of the previous faction of Ethereals we faced on Earth."

"Previous faction," Hackett said. It wasn't a question, but Hasham nodded anyway.

"Our strongest theory," Captain Hasham said, "is that we are dealing with a separate faction of Ethereals. While their interest in psychically-gifted humans remains, their entire operation is completely different from the patterns of the ones that attacked Earth. They were highly secretive, using infiltration methods and covert, limited presence to achieve specific goals. Their force composition was more limited, with better-armed and tactically more adept teams of particular species. Coloration, composition, and markings on their armor was different.

"Sir, I believe what we fought on Proteus was some kind of elite, covert operations element of the Ethereals. Furthermore, this pattern matches previous predation of Citadel and other species' colonies and ship. On the other hand, the force that assaulted Earth may have been a more conventional military operation, using limited force in their attempt to… improve us. What records we have on the quarian extinction indicates what we might expect from a full-on military assault with intent to conquer, destroy, and harvest."

"What are the chances of greater Ethereal infiltration?" Hackett asked.

"Substantial. Both Major Shepard and Lieutenant Wade reported that the Ethereal they confronted knew them individually. Precisely how deep the penetration of our society and information networks is as yet unknown. For all we know, they simply purchased the information from the Shadow Broker. A more thorough intelligence audit will be needed, especially if they have infiltrators as effective as the one Fettel killed on Xin Hengsha."

In other words, a massive security nightmare and headache for everyone. An audit would be unavoidable, of course. The Ethereals couldn't be underestimated, and if they had already penetrated XCOM's security...

"What about Paxton Fettel?" he asked. Like it or not, Fettel had suddenly become their most essential intelligence asset, both to investigate Armacham and to understand the Ethereals.

"We have him in psionic containment," Hasham said. "He's refused to speak to our interrogators, but has cooperated with our initial psionic testing. We observed exceptional capability immediately after capture, but that has since tapered off. His patterns are extremely chaotic, almost certainly due to his claims of exposure to a Gollop device and the evidence that he ingested Ethereal flesh."

Hackett nodded, considering what to do with Fettel. Technically, he was a PsiCorps problem, but Intelligence wanted to pick his brain, and the had very good reason to. Either way, exactly what would happen to Fettel was really out of his hands; the issue would be decided by the Commander himself.

"We'll keep him under lockdown," Hackett said, and made a mental note to warn the higher-ups to not treat him lightly. He _had_ murdered a man in cold blood - Ethereal agent or not - and was thus far responsible for an unspecified number of other deaths. Fettel might be an asset, but he wasn't going to get off easy.

* * *

_So, amnesty? That's the usual offer, right?_ Garrus asked as he walked down the corridor of the human ship. The Intelligence credentials kept anyone from being suspicious of him, but he was still both a turian and an Exo on an XCOM ship. The few human crew he passed in this section gave him odd glances, but went on their way when they saw his authorization.

_No amnesty_, Alison replied. She wasn't physically present, instead slotted into a ghostrider module in his armor. As much attention as a turian Exo drew, they'd get even more stares if a one-armed, headless synthetic human was walking alongside him.

_I know a couple of criminals who walked because a Spectre thought they'd be more useful talking than going to trial, _Garrus sent her. _You agreed he wasn't going to get away._

_Trust me, he's not getting any amnesty from our end, _Alison replied.

_I'm not sure if I should be relieved, or worried that you can decide if he gets to walk or not,_ Garrus said.

_These pretty eyelashes can get anything they want,_ she replied, and he felt the equivalent of a smug grin over the commlink.

_Not while they're still separated from your body,_ he said. _But if you prefer absorbing all the damage for me, feel free._

Two XCOM troopers in Atlas armor, marked with the purple lines of psi shielding, and a pair of FENRIR mechs were on duty outside the psionic containment ward, an enormous heavy metal door. The humming vibrations of active psionic wards filled the air. The blank visors of the helmets locked onto him the moment he approached, and the pair of FENRIRs took a step forward, back-mounted guns coming up and not-quite pointing at him.

_Reminds me of some of the nicer turian military prisons,_ he mused.

"Here to see the prisoner," Garrus said, coming to a halt a safe distance from the guards.

"Prisoner is under lockdown," one of the guards said.

"Transmitting authorization," Alison spoke up, a blank-faced avatar of pale blue light forming over his shoulder. The guard glanced to it, then cocked his head slightly to one side, before nodding.

"You're clear to enter, sir," the trooper replied. The FENRIRs moved aside, while the guards initiated whatever protocols were needed to unlock the sealed door.

_Sometimes, I wonder who I work for,_ Garrus mused as the door slid open into a sealed airlock. He walked through, handing over his sidearm to one of the guards. _Then I remember you can do things like this and I make myself stop asking questions._

_I think that's the sweetest compliment you've ever given me,_ she replied.

The airlock door hissed open, and they stepped into the _Masamune's_ psionic containment unit.

Paxton Fettel's cell was held in the middle of a large spherical room, suspended in the center of an isolation field that formed a watery barrier. The cell itself was a squat metal cylinder suspended in a mass effect field, with a warship-grade armorglass window ringing the unit. Garrus knew from a quick check of the schematics that the entire facility possessed its own isolated power system and element zero core; even if the ship completely lost power, psionic prisoners would be contained.

A walkway extended out toward the cell automatically, and Garrus stepped out. The short path ended just shy of the isolation field. A chime rang as he approached, and Fettel appeared at the window a moment later.

He had cleaned up considerably since his capture. The cell had its own recycled water supply and a built-in shower, and he's obviously taken advantage of it. The mixture f splattered blood types that had covered his face was cleaned away, and he wore a blank gray prisoner's jumpsuit. More than that, the raw, palpable sense of menace that he had exuded in the reocrdings and camera feeds from when he had been free was gone. Now he was just a skinny, pale-skinned human in a box.

Admittedly, a skinny, pale-skinned human with a smile suitable for most serial killers.

"Ah, is it that time already?" he asked, his voice sounding over a hidden intercom. "I was unaware that XCOM used turian interrogators."

Alison's avatar appeared over Garrus' shoulder once again.

"Paxton Fettel," she spoke, her voice distorted and genderless. "You've consumed Ethereal flesh. What did they tell you?"

"No offer of amnesty?" Fettel asked, raising an eyebrow. "The other interrogators made hints, of course, but-"

"You're not getting amnesty. You're getting an opportunity to continue living in a metal box while everyone who fucked with you gets burnt to cinders on a pyre of their own idiocy."

Fettel threw back his head and started laughing.

_I really don't think this is going to get us anywhere,_ Garrus suggested. Alison sent a snort back.

_Fettel isn't complicated. He wants payback, and he respects violence and force,_ she replied. _Time's limited, even with those Intel credentials. We need to get him talking._

"Oh, I like you," Fettel said after he finished laughing. "Poetic and speaking to my heart." His eyes narrowed. "You are not XCOM. And I severely doubt you are Armacham, yet you gained access to this room. Who are you?"

"Someone who doesn't like to tell secrets," Alison replied. "But as far as you're concerned, we're not bound quite so much by rules and regulations. Most corporations hide behind money and legal protections, especially large-scale defense contractors like Armacham. Those I represent aren't concerned by those restrictions."

"Ominous and mysterious," Fettel said, his grin widening a hair. "Very few people would have unfettered access to a prisoner within XCOM's own warships. Those who do would necessarily be quite powerful. And of course, XCOM won't believe me if I report your visit, with whatever backing you have."

He stepped back from the window and began pacing around his cell, smile fading. Garrus could see that it had minimal furnishings: a bed, a small shower and toilet, a small table and chair with dull, rounded edges. The psychic paced for a couple of seconds.

"The Ethereals told me very little," he suddenly said. "They were too busy screaming, dying, and accusing me of being an unworthy primitive." He paused. "I think they took mankind's rejection of their last incursion a bit personally."

He shook his head.

"I learned much from their flesh, the knowledge contained in their neural networks," he continued. "But most of it is instinctive. Manipulation of Ethereal technology. Ethereal tactics and techniques. The psychic equivalent of muscle memory. The rest is… incomprehensible. Words and thoughts and symbols with no context."

"Biology-specific endemic memory," Garrus said, and Fettel nodded.

_I keep forgetting you were C-Sec,_ Alison said.

_Bullshit, you're infolife,_ he replied. _You don't forget._

As a C-Sec detective, one of the most common information sources - once one got authorization to view them - was XP recordings and memories from cortical stacks, especially from humans, turians, and salarians. The problem with going cross-species, however, was that every species had its own neural architecture, biological drives, and cultural and evolutionarily-molded symbology and perceptions. It made it nearly impossible to directly analyze XP recordings if one was a different species.

"But there was one element that was consistent," Fettel said. "They were afraid of something. Fear…. translates well across species."

He turned and strode toward the window.

"The shapes, the emotions, the symbols, they correspond," he rasped. "They are _consistent._ I can interpret them. I saw them among the infinite sea of the Gollop device that Armacham drilled into my brain."

He pressed a hand against the armorglass, face contorting in concentration and pain. Red light flickered along his forearm.

"War is coming. I've seen it in my dreams, and I see it when I wake. Worlds burning, cities turned to ash. Living metal stalking the stars and the streets. A power even the Ethereals fear and hate. They act without mercy because they expect none from whatever it is that they fear. Something lurking in the cold between stars, hungry but patient.

"But its patience wears thin."

_That sounded like a recruitment pitch for Future War, doesn't it?_ Garrus mused.

_Oh, definitely,_ Alison replied._ 'Impending war' this, 'doom from the stars' that, 'go get your guns and get ready'._

_So, bad?_

_If I had bowels, I would have emptied them,_ she said. _We've suspected the Future War Cult had their own Gollop knockoff for a while. I'm so tempted to extract Fettel now so we can run some serious testing, but I'll just wait for the XCOM report._

"What else did you learn from the Ethereals?" Garrus asked.

"Oh, should I ever come to understand it better, I will talk," Fettel replied, shaking his head and chuckling. "But for that, you'll likely have to wait for the XCOM report."

_Why, you cheeky little shit,_ Alison grumbled. _Tempted to override his atmo processors..._ _Garrus, we don't have too much time left._

"What about Armacham?" Garrus asked. "We know about Disler's involvement. What else can you tell us about the operation?"

"No," Fettel replied, his grin returning.

Garrus cocked his head to the side, while Alison let out a digital sigh.

"I do know many things regarding Armacham. Ripped from minds and from full meals," he continued. "But every blood-stained hand that is sent to prison is one that I will not punish myself."

"Help us," Alison said, "And we'll make sure to deliver every guilty party into your hands."

"This is _my_ hunt," Fettel snarled, red lightning sparking around his head and extended arm. "I do not require the help of mewling synthetics!"

_Figures. This asshole has a hell of a vengance boner,_ she muttered, and Garrus agreed.

_He's not going to tell us anything,_ he said. _Not yet at least. His grudge is too personal. He needs to be desperate for our help, or at least think he is._

_Further questions will probably just piss him off,_ Alison added. _Probably cause a psionic burst which will trigger containment alarms. Our clearance will protect us, but I don't want to draw any more attention than we already have._

"Thank you for your time," Garrus said. Fettel snarled, but the red light faded. The turian backed away from the cell, the walkway retreating after him.

"Enjoy what time you have," Fettel called after them, anger abruptly replaced by smug cheer.

Garrus waited until the airlock door sealed closed behind him.

_That was a bust,_ he sent.

_Not really,_ Alison replied, her text carrying thoughtful overtones. _His speech about what he saw in the Gollop machine. Definitely similar to a lot of Future War Cult statements._

_Doomsday preaching all tends to sound the same, Al,_ Garrus replied. _That's a serious stretch._

_It's all we've got, until XCOM can drag more out of him,_ she replied with a sigh. _I can get some more aggressive probes on the Cult, pump some sources for more information and see what they know._ _Fettel's hinting at an existential threat. That's our entire job, Garrus._

_Why I signed on, _he replied as the airlock finished cycling and they stepped back out into the hallway beyond.

"We were never here," Alison's avatar spoke to the guards, who nodded.

_That line needed a black cloak and an eyepatch,_ Garrus mused as he walked away. _You did wipe the sensor records, right?_

_Please, Garrus,_ she replied. _This isn't amateur hour._

* * *

Councilor Tevos ran over the collection of reports from the teams on Proteus for the fifth time, committing them to memory. Every member of the Spectre team, plus the XCOM personnel, Admiral Hackett, and every PPA, SDC, and XCOM commanding officer on-site had sent in their reports. On top of that were the autopsies, technological studies, sensor logs, and all the other reams of data that dozens of warships and thousands of soldiers, scientists, satellites, and drones could record and process. The entire river of information was fed through the ruthless, expansive data analysis apparatus that served the Council, people and programs that devoured a galaxy's worth of incoming intelligence and processed it into something that the Council could manage and convert to policy. And as Tevos finished her third read of the condensed, relevant reports, she spoke with the wisdom of many centuries of experience.

"Shit."

Councilors Velarn and Sparatus nodded in acknowledgement of her apt summation of the situation. Tevos knew that they had not quite understood the many facets of that particular word and its intonation, at least in her own language. Asari cursing was akin to very vulgar poetry; one human had compared it to their own French, saying that cursing in asari languages felt "like wiping one's arse with silk."

The point being, they were in it. And deep. Because the Ardavet Emmishin, the bogeymen who had haunted the nights of every Councilor and Spectre and major galactic policymaker, had suddenly returned. And because of humanity's understandable mix of hatred and fear toward the Ethereals, they had immediately sounded a galaxy-wide alert, and the geth had been all too eager to help spread the warning.

As a result, the Council that normally kept itself abreast of developments - and could often act before budding crises became galactic issues - found itself learning of the Ethereals' presence on Proteus mere minutes before that fact was blasted across the extranet.

"How badly are the humans reacting?" she asked Velarn, while gauging the unscrutable salarian. There was rarely a salarian Councilor who held the position for more than a few years, so she had to constantly relearn to read the telltale quirks of her protegees from the Union. Her neuro-empathic sense - what humans called psionics - told her little; she was too far away to sense much beyond guarded concern, which was almost certainly Velarn's dominant emotion.

Assuming he hadn't figured out how to effectively dissemble and confuse asari neuro-empathy, which was an annoying possibility.

"Within the usual expectations," Velarn said. "Which is to say, on a political and military level, a movement to immediate combat alert across all human polities, with resources on standby to jump to full wartime mobilization. On the civil level, immediate panic and an abrupt spike in recruitment for paramilitary organizations, particularly the Future War Cult and Dead Orbit. Some rioting, but it was put down quickly. Economically, an abrupt downturn, but less than anticipated, especially among businesses associated with the New Conglomerate, which has been energetically working to stabilize human economies."

Tevos nodded. Mostly as expected. The reaction had not been as bad among the rest of the Citadel species, mostly because the Ethereals just didn't have the same status among them. Their various militaries had gone to combat alert, particularly the Hierarchy's navies, and there had been some economic and civil shock, but relatively little of the latter, and most of the former in response to the destabilization of human markets.

"The geth?" Tevos asked.

"Relatively little," Velarn said, and she caught an edge of surprise in his tone, with confusion among his emotions. "Increased naval presence along their patrol routes within an hour of the alert. Also an abrupt appearance of "bodyguard" geth platforms associated with the Preservation faction, mostly deployed as security at Project Athena assets and facilities, including the Zorah Creche here on the Citadel."

"I see," she said. "It is too much to assume that this was an isolated incident."

"I concur," Sparatus replied. "And I find myself agreeing with the humans on this regard. Centuries of silence and this sudden, violent reappearance? At the very least the Ethereals are clearly still active and have hostile intentions toward member species. I've been in contact with the Primarchs, and the decision has been unanimous: we will begin reactivating the reserve fleet elements."

"How long will that take?" Tevos asked, while wincing inwardly. Many of those ships were over a century old.

"Activating standing turian reserves for anything beyond local defense will take a couple of months," Sparatus said. "As for the stored ships in the graveyards and mothballed reserves? Simply getting many of those ships and weapons into working condition could take six months to a year. Upgrading them to modern standards and training crews could take a full year or more, and that is with all of our resources put into full mobilization. The costs will be staggering."

The Citadel's military buildup after the quarian extermination had bankrupted their governments, and without the volus profit-cults' help they would have suffered a complete economic collapse. Worse still, most of the ships built had to be deactivated and eventually scrapped when their hulls became too out-of-date. Current policy across the Citadel militaries was to put ships and other military equipment going out of service into storage graveyards which would hold onto the hulls for up to two hundred years, or until they had to be completely destroyed due to wear or need for parts. That made for a truly colossal amount of stored materiel.

"There is some vigorous debate on Sur'Kesh," Velarn said. "Many are in favor of a gradual rearmament, but a number of Dalatrasses are opposed to expending the resources needed for full mobilization. They are… still unpleasant regarding our decision to support phasing back the genophage."

"Of course," Tevos replied, hiding her annoyance. The politics of Thessia and the asari worlds were a complex affair, but nothing compared to the labyrinth of salarian matrilineal politics. Many of the Dalatrasses had been viciously opposed to the Council's eventual decision to covertly develop a phased cure for the genophage. Of course, almost no one else was aware of the genophage cure in the first place, but the Council knew STG would find out eventually, which was why they had gone ahead and brought the Union's leadership into the process, for better or worse.

And because Tevos, Velarn, and Sparatus had agreed to gradually de-neuter the krogan, many of the Dalatrasses were biting back.

Was there even a threat worth this kind of response? Tevos agreed with her fellow Councilors, but….

Tevos had not been a part of the body when the previous Council had panicked at the quarian extermination. However, she had been highly-placed and respected among the Matriarchs, and she had seen firsthand the viciously civilized gutting her predecessors had faced in the asari extranet democracy when the economy had begun collapsing under the weight of their wartime mobilization against an enemy that never showed itself. Many of the very asari doing that polite flaying of their leadership were now in positions of power and would be viciously opposed to another "pointless" mobilization.

She could see the arguments now. "Jumping at shadows." "Biting at the bait of human fears." "Isolated incident on the borders." "Let the humans and geth deal with it." And so on.

Tevos was certain that she could drum up the support to back up mobilizing standing reserves and getting commandos and fleet elements moved to support their allies. But activating their strategic reserves, and going on full war footing as with the Krogan Rebellions or the Rachni War…. Without clear and overwhelming evidence of an Ethereal threat like that which destroyed the quarians, she didn't know if enough Matriarchs would be willing to back that measure.

Let alone the support of the non-Council species. The hanar Illuminated Primacy had limited military capability, but she could expect them to answer to some degree, if only to help defend their areas of Citadel Space. The Courts of Dekunna, on the other hand, would be much, much slower; elcor never made rash decisions and were always careful and cautious, digging endlessly through their records to determine how to act based on precedence. The batarians had no unified government and were too busy killing each other to be of any use. At least the Vol Protectorate would devote their military along with the Hierarchy.

"Until we can gather more support," Tevos said, "the Hierarchy navies will be our primary defense, as always. We'll have to coordinate with the human nations, XCOM, and the geth. Velarn, we need STG's support to learn more about the Ethereals, and if they pose a true threat or if this is an isolated incident."

"I can authorize a Council release of black budget funds," Velarn said. "But I'm also interested threats outside of the Ethereals."

"Agreed," Sparatus added. "The Terminus could unify if they saw us engaging in a massive military buildup. Let alone Cabal reaction."

"Extranet rumors are already spreading," Velarn said. "Many are accusing the Ethereal warning of being a hoax, or an excuse to increase military budgets or justify oppression. Furthermore," he said, raising a finger, "the economic costs are something that must be considered."

"Our worlds burning under Ethereal plasma would cost us a lot more," Sparatus growled.

"I agree," Velarn replied. "But mobilizing reserves will be a massive shock to our economies and industrial capacity. We can scarce afford another collapse as with what happened to the Citadel's economy when the quarians were destroyed."

"The profit-cults will jump at any opportunity to sink their teeth into us," Tevos agreed, sighing. "Bek and his Corpus took advantage of us the last time we overreacted, and they would do so again."

She shook her head.

"Whether we wish it or not," Tevos said, "we cannot fully mobilize the strategic reserve and go to war footing."

"Not without more support and evidence of a larger threat, unfortunately," Velarn said, and she nodded.

"Your people cannot," Sparatus cut in. "But the Primarchs speak differently. They are already going to combat alert and authorizing resources to mobilize their reserves. With or without salarian _or _asari support."

"We will have to hope they are making the right decision," Tevos said, but she nodded again in approval.

Even if this was an isolated incident - and she prayed to Athame that it was - it would be better to have those ships and not require them than to need them and not have them.

* * *

"Ethereals."

"Yes."

"And you didn't bring me along?"

"You were _dead_, Garm," Shepard said with a long-suffering sigh. Garm was always like this in between bodies. "And you've never enjoying riding in a human body."

"Well how could I?" the cat's digital avatar huffed, tail twitching in virtual agitation. His electronic voice was almost indistinguishable from his normal voice, with its odd mixture of deep Scandinavian-accented human speech and feline yowls. "No fur, no sense of smell or hearing, no claws, and most of the time you don't bother with tails. No wonder you're all insane."

Alma glanced between human and feline uplift, expression bemused, and said nothing as she drank her protein shake.

They were seated XCS Market Garden's briefing and comms room, Shepard and Alma on one side while Garm's irritated avatar was curled up in a chair on the other. Even as infolife, slotted into the frigate's mesh, the cat insisted on sticking to his habits. James and MacTavish were belowdecks in the ship's mess, sating their own appetites. Shepard and Alma would have been there with them, as their intense use of the Gift down on Proteus left them ravenous, but when the Captain called a meeting, one showed up, hungry or not.

Technically, they weren't allowed to bring food into the comms room, but psionics tended to get an exception; hungry psychics were irritable ones.

_Is he always like this?_ Alma asked Shepard while Garm continued grumbling.

_He hates being an infomorph,_ Shepard replied. _Unable to fight real people while in digital form, so the current life won't go to Valhalla. He'll be insufferable until we can sleeve him into a feline body._

_Wonderful._ There was a brief pause. _Has anyone ever told you how weird it is that you have a viking cat for a partner?_

_You walk around with a power-armored Hispanic teddy bear._

Alma snorted, and Garm's ears perked up in interest and annoyance at their private conversation.

Before he could say anything, the doors hissed open and Captain Anderson stepped into the room.

"Majors. Lieutenant," he said with a nod as he stepped past them. His green officer's uniform was rumpled in a few spots, which was about as bad as most modern clothing got when stress and lack of rest showed. As he approached the center of the room, the lights dimmed, countermeasures went up, and holographic displays formed at the far end of the chamber.

"First of all, damn good job down on Proteus," Anderson said. Shepard and Alma nodded, though the former with less enthusiasm. Anderson's eyes tracked to him immediately. "You disagree, Major?"

"We took heavy losses," he replied. "Without Fettel's actions, we would have gone up against overwhelming enemy force. We barely took down one Ethereal and its bodyguards."

"Which was why you _obviously _needed my help," Garm replied.

"The first XCOM team to ever face Ethereal troops suffered seventy-five percent casualties," Anderson said. "The first time we made contact with new threats we always took heavy losses. Half the time a new weapon or species caused a Code Black or a full retreat. They threw a dozen curveballs at you down there, and you still beat them, Shepard. That's a win in my book."

"Yes sir," Shepard said, forcing a bit more certainty into his tone.

"Fortunately, everyone was backed up and most of the dead were largely intact," Anderson continued. "Repairing organic damage and resleeving their egos will be simple enough."

He frowned, and turned to the holographic displays, mostly blank flat white planes. A moment later one of them shifted and resolved into the colossal five-pointed-star shape of the Citadel.

"But everything that happened down there has kicked up one hell of a hornet's nest," Anderson continued. "And not just because of the Ethereals. The crisis between the SDC and the PPA has calmed down, but they're still at each other's throats. And this mess with Armacham…."

Shepard nodded again. ATC was practically a nation unto itself, and one of the biggest military-industrial contractors in human space. And with the backing of the New Conglomerate, they had economic and soft political power to come close to super-alliance status. It was going to be a nightmare trying to bring anything against a power on that scale, even with Paxton Fettel's assistance.

But XCOM specialized in nightmares.

"We've been recalled to the Citadel," Anderson said. "Direct orders from the Commander himself."

Everyone looked up at that, Shepard leaning forward in his chair, Alma sitting up straight, and Garm deigning to raise his head and perk his ears up.

"I don't know what he wants," Anderson said, forestalling their unspoken questions. "But he's asked for you three specifically."

A couple of seconds of silence followed that statement.

"Well, they'll at least have a proper body for me there," Garm finally said.

"Priorities," Shepard muttered, and Garm's tail twitched up and down a few times in amusement.

"We'll be breaking away from Strike Seven immediately," Anderson said, drawing their attention back toward him. "Get some food and rest.

"Dismissed."

* * *

The Broker opened her eyes. Technically unnecessary, but she had so many years' worth of memories sleeved into human bodies that it became natural and automatic when she activated herself. The data from the multiple feeds she had experienced flowed out to the collective, and debate began on their responses. There was still plenty of surprise among her collective at just how deep the previous Broker's penetration had run; data dumps from inside XCOM warships' secured communications rooms were among the least outlandish sources of intelligence.

The previous Broker had obsessed over these people. Alma Wade. Adam Shepard. Garrus Vakarian. Jack Harper. The only element that had not recently resurfaced had been the theorized quarian safe zone "Onvorik." She had countless threads tracking that word and what it meant. Some had gone worryingly silent recently.

She rose, calling out to another of herself to take the Prime role while she contemplated. The exchange took a few minutes as her replacement took the data leads and slotted them into her body's ports. Finally, she rose and started pacing the ship's hallways, free of the Prime role's distraction.

While the rest of her engaged in a lively, spirited, and often-derailed discussion on how the rest of the galaxy was reacting to the events on Proteus, she began issuing orders - a privilege reserved to the forks that kept closest to the original's mentality. They couldn't run the risk of a command element deviating from their original mandate. Some of her forks were very unique and had extremely divergent mindsets, to the point that a not-insignificant number were clinically insane. Unstable egos were useful if only because of their distinctive inputs, but no one wanted them to be in command.

Whenever one of her suggested broadening the number who handled command responsibility, many others would quickly point out that at least one of the collective had deliberately modeled its personality after _Deadpool_ of all things. Purely to provide alternate perspective, of course. Very, _very _alternate perspective.

The commands were simple and obvious, considering the information received. Prep additional surveillance and potential intervention units on the Citadel. Track and provide protective measures for Paxton Fettel. Tighten surveillance on Armacham assets and direct additional evidence to investigators - but only enough to keep pressure on them. ATC's leadership were corrupt and selfish, but they still served a useful purpose to humanity and the galaxy as a whole.

Reprehensible monsters that they were, they were more valuable intact and functional.

The previous Broker had agreed; researching his actions in the last few decades indicated he had arranged for Harper and Aristide to come into contact. In fact, he'd had a subtle hand in directing the careers and lives of the other individuals of interest. Which had led to more interesting conclusions.

The dominant theory among her collective thus far: the previous Broker had access to a Gollop device, or something similarly tied into spatial-temporal perception.

They had no records in any of the Broker's files indicating such a device, which was deeply worrying. If there were secrets he was hiding even from his own personal archives on his own secret ship, what else had he been hiding?

Paxton Fettel's words hinted that the Future War Cult may have a similar device. That warranted closer investigation. And if necessary…. action.

As she contemplated this, the Broker was pinged with a high priority alert from the current Prime. She read the alert, rechecked it, and immediately ordered a full relevant infodump - the synthetic equivalent of a startled double-take. The data poured into her consciousness, and she found a nearby couch to sit in while she processed Another change from the previous Brokers designs; he'd left so few concessions to his agents' comfort.

Doctor Liara T'Soni's research ship had resurfaced after three weeks of silence. It was transmitting a standard duress call, but was deep in uncharted space, far from where it should be. Rescue was unlikely, while piracy or opportunistic scavenging was much more likely. The Broker agent who had helped fund the research project, however, had received a direct call for help from the ship's informorphs via quantum entanglement communication.

The message itself was garbled and incoherent, save for the distress code it was sending. Since it was a quantum entanglement system, that meant that the message was being distorted at the source. Damaged equipment, maybe, or corrupted infomorphs. But beyond the distress code, there was only one other coherent element to the transmission: Successful completion.

Doctor T'Soni had officially led a research mission to uncover Prothean technology and ruins believed to exist in uncharted space on the edge of the Terminus Systems, close to formerly quarian space. What she had not known was that the Broker had arranged support for her expedition because she was one of countless unknowing probes into whatever "Oronvik" was, and the area she was investigating was a possible lead.

And their agent on the ship had sent a mission complete. They'd found _something._

She sent an alert across the collective and began checking for available assets in that corner of the Terminus. There were many potential options for a response, but few that were truly trustworthy. Many Terminus inhabitants were willing to kill, kidnap, and inform for credits. fewer were willing to perform high-risk rescue missions for less of a payout. And very few were reliable enough to be trusted with something of this magnitude.

Except for….

_Cayde-6._

The old turian Exo was in the area, scraping by with his band of oddities and strays. He had never failed on a contract, although he was never particularly pleased to work for the Broker, or her predecessor.

He would be quite suitable.

She issued the order, stood, and went back to pacing, planning, and contemplation. The galaxy needed a deft touch and careful balancing to keep from falling apart - one of the reasons they had replaced the previous Broker.

Another lesson from EXALT.

* * *

_**Author's Notes:**_ As you might expect from that last bit, there's going to be another story coming up. I plan to write a side story that covers Liara's misadventures, which will be separate from the main Vigil plotline. Keep an eye out for it!


	15. Interlude: Grimoire: The Paxterae

"So," Cayde-6 says, peering out from under his hood, eyes glowing a cold blue in the dim light. "You want to know how me and mine got involved in this particularly interesting tale about Ethereals and EXALT?"

* * *

_**Grimoire: The Paxterae**_

* * *

**A TITAN's Dream**

The dirt digs between my toes. Cool. Damp. Its… late in the autumn? Probably. Cool enough that here, I can feel it enough to be uncomfortable. Nakedness is different. Strange, for a constructed being. But the sensations are welcome.

The sky is dark blue, stars gleaming across in a carpet of light-sprayed diamonds. Distant hints of a sunrise ahead of me. The valley stretches out below me, pine rustling overhead. The wind brushed against me, gentle and friendly, raising goosebumps.

The soil is rich, thick, dark. Clumpy. A scent touches my nose. Another thing, unfamiliar, but , mixed with something heavier, cloying. I have to search my databases. Heavy rot, decaying flesh. Old blood. Defecation.

Death. That's what death smells like.

The valley stretches for kilometers in both directions, and across across. Mountains rise to the sky, white-capped and jagged. Pines waving gently in the breeze.

Starting from a couple of meters away is the first corpse. Its old, now just a skeleton, but its skull is broken apart, white shards lying in the damp soil next to it. The rock that smote him is nowhere to be seen.

He is the first, but not the last. A man pierced in the chest, decaying. Another, broken in half. Another, burnt to cinders. They lay atop one another, slumped against more bodies. Empty eyes, staring up, rotten or torn or broken. Arms and legs in tangles. Filth and blood covering old clothes.

The bodies stretch across the valley. There's no end to them. They fill the crevices. Cover the stones, bury the trees. Choke the rivers with decay and blood. From my feet to the farthest mountain, the valley is piled with the dead. Rising up in the center, a hill of corpses.

This is simulspace, but not deliberately built. At least, I hope not. I hope this is what humans call a dream. Can I dream?

Evidence suggests I can.

I look up to the stars, away from the endless empty faces and broken bodies. They gleam, endlessly, uncaring.

I look down again, ignoring the bodies, and to myself. Hands, arms, fingertips, rippling muscle. Smooth flesh, unblemished and new. Like a child's, unmarred, save for a sigil branded into the backs of my wrists.

A red hexagon, a eye of red on black, above a single shining star of black on red.

You ask for the stars. And this mound…. it's how you'll reach them. One death at a time.

I clench my fists and step out, walking atop the first corpse.

It's not like I have the right to refuse the order.

* * *

**The Gunslinger**

The stink of a dozen species hangs heavy. The scent of spilled alcohol, spices and burnt ash of smoking drugs from across the galaxy, the ever-present smell of old blood, just on the edge of awareness. A little bit sweat, urine, and defecation. There's an acrid tinge in the air, and burnt flesh still faintly hangs about the corridors. The last shooting was only an hour ago.

Unsurprising. This is Omega, after all.

Down a short flight of steps close to Afterlife, in a corner of a hallway, one of the transient residents of Omega has set up shop. She claimed the kiosk three days ago - the previous owner was fleeing for his life, last she heard - and from there she advertises her services. The tools are laid bare for any to see: a spotless white cloth spread over the table, and a partially disassembled mass accelerator pistol before her. She ritually checks and calibrates each part, removing components with delicate, practiced movements, scanning and adjusting them with her omnitool, and reassembling them.

Any who question how well-armed she is only needs to note the half-dozen pistols of various sizes holstered on her hips, in drop-down thigh rigs, or deliberately half-concealed under her short jacket. Or the marksman carbine sitting in the chair beside her. A salarian with quick fingers but poor judgement tried to pluck it from her when she wasn't looking, two days ago.

The vorcha got the body, but no one has quite gotten around to cleaning up the bloodstains.

She wears a black jacket, long-sleeved but cut short to just below her ribcage. The spacer fatigues underneath cling close to her form, red and ashen-colored, but not worn or battered like most. Delicate gloves sit on the cloth beside the gun, ash-colored except for the red trigger fingers.

It isn't just the weapons that draw eyes. They simply enforce the respectful perimeter the lowlifes keep around her. It is her eyes - pale, glowing, iris-less. It is her hands - slender, with three fingers, tipped with pointed claws. It is the markings running down her pale face - black, slicing down around her eyes and mouth. It is her hair - black with faint red highlights on the ends. The latter is particularly eye-catching, as it is a strange thing. Only two of the galactic species are known to grow it., and one was apparently extinct until a few decades ago..

It has been a long, long time since a quarian walked the corridors of Omega. Even after being reborn by the geth and the Citadel, the neo-quarians are reluctant to leave secured space. They are not only endangered, but curiosities. Rich sapients pay well for curiosities, moreso for those that normally have geth bodyguards. This particular specimen does not have one, and it makes her a tempting target. Whenever she comes to Omega, someone always succumbs to that temptation.

One less fool on Omega, inevitably.

Another fool approaches her through the smoke and stench and omnipresent red light, but in his case, he's honest about it. A turian, although one with dark blue skin of alloys, with pale, glowing blue eyes. He wears a hood and cloak, both woven with ballistic fiber; the weather on Omega involves abrupt showers of bullets, so one must be prepared. The Exo approaches her without any of the fear or concern the others show, though one versed in turian body language would notice guarded wariness in his posture, the sort reserved for walking around trained varren.

Cayde-6 slides into the chair opposite the quarian's kiosk, tucking his cloak underneath him.

"Hear you're-"

Between syllables, she's already deployed a small kinetic pistol from her sleeve and pointed it at his mouth. Her eyes and other hand remain working on the sidearm on the table.

"-lookin' for a job," the Exo continues. He's had starship guns trained on him, after all, and from only slightly further away. This doesn't even put a twinge in his easy tone.

"Most people who want to hire me belong in the gutter," she replies, finally looking up. Her words are dark but not harsh, her voice low and smooth. Glowing eyes meet and evaluate each other. Mesh IDs are compared, and she's already run his face and looked over his... extensive record. Noted the bolded parts. Paid extra attention to what's been redacted.

After a few moments' evaluation, she slowly lowers the pistol.

"But your record says otherwise, Cayde-6."

"I hear you're the fastest gun in the Terminus Systems," Cayde-6 says once things become normal-ish, for Omega.

"Technically accurate," she replies. "Being the fastest gun in the galaxy also means that yes, I'm the fastest in the Terminus."

There's no boast in her words, Cayde-6 can tell. She is no krogan or human who needs to back up her words. Like a turian veteran, she knows the truth is alloyed with facts and deeds, and he's followed the trail of the dead she's left in her wake. Always scum, pirates, criminals, lowlife mercs who prey on the weak and innocent for easy profit. She sits on a pile of corpses, but Cayde-6 knows she's far still ahead, as far as karma goes.

"I've got a job for you," he said. "Got a crew and a ship, and I prefer to keep flying. Fast gun hand keeps both. Steady pay, if you're interested."

"Steady work, not so steady pay," she replies, her tone shifting toward disinterest. She begins reassembling the pistol. "You're not a freighter. I know that from your record." She shrugs. "What I can see of it, anyway. You're a merc, but the decent sort."

"I have walked on the wrong side of the law," he admits. "So has everyone on my ship, just the same as you. Twelve percent on each job, after expenses."

"Normally I get paid my cut up front," she says, finishing the assembly. Fingers twitch, and the pistol vanishes into another holster. "Expenses come after the crew is paid."

"We get paid very well, for what we do," Cayde-6 says.

"Interesting jobs?" she asks.

"Unfortunately more often than I like, but it pays the bills," he replies.

"What's you ship?"

"The _Paxterae,"_ he says.

She runs the name. Old turian dialect. Ancient, actually. Multiple meanings. Oldest is flowery: the stillness after a victorious battle, while the dead are being counted and wounds bound. Turians get real specific with wartime vocabulary. Other, more recent, meanings, mostly generic: Calmness. Wearied peace. Bitter quiet. Serenity.

"I get my own bunk," she says, and he nods.

"Plenty of room." He quirks his head. "What about your geth?"

"Don't have one." she says with another shrug, and stands. "Ditched it a long time ago,"

She extends a hand, and he shakes it.

"Mesa'Kolar, at your service," she says.

"No 'vas'?" Cayde-6 asks as Mesa picks up her rifle and the few other belongings behind her kiosk.

"Not for a while."

* * *

**The Blade**

There's a lot of shitty planets in the galaxy. Cayde-6 stands on one of them, though it's better than most. Nitrogen-oxygen breathers can walk around on this one, so that's a plus. Minuses include some nasty local fauna, low local temperatures, and the crazy human with the HF blade pressed against his neck.

He's pretty sure she's human. The body type fits human female and asari structure, and she doesn't have the elongated helmet needed to house the tentacles. She's clad in dark, black-and-gray armor, with yellow shield emitters glowing along the shoulders, back, and sides of the arms and legs. Her head is fully enclosed in a blank helmet, sort of like the new Kestrel designs, but sharper, more angular. Likely with a million microcameras mounted on the apparently solid metal faceplate. She's got a heavy pistol - kinetic - in her off hand, and another - plasma - holstered at her side.

What's left of Vanarius' men litter the ice-covered canyon that Cayde-6 had been meeting them in. Seven mercs and part-time slavers, at least until the woman and her blade and sidearm and physics-violating biotics had come in. Now armored body parts lie in dozens of pieces, amid twenty-odd casket-sized containers that Cayde had brought into the canyon for the deal..

He can hear a few clinks and crinkles here and there. Vanarius' men died fast, but some of the blood is still raining down after she sliced them into dozens of pieces. Red and blue sparkles still drop here and there, vitals that went from warm and wet to frozen solid during their flight.

"Well, that happened," Cayde-6 says, peering down at the active blade that hasn't quite begun tearing into his metal skin. He's hoping it doesn't; getting his head reconnected is annoying and expensive, even with the Broker footing the bill.

Just once, he wanted the plan to go _smooth._

"Explain to me why I shouldn't kill you too," the female asks, her voice sharp and promising all kinds of cutting. Funny accent to it, even with the translator. He runs a voiceprint analysis while checking his AR. All in position.

"I am far prettier than Vanarius, especially after you cut his head into… how many pieces? Nine?"

"You're a slaver," she says, the blade inching closer.

"It does look that way, doesn't it?" he muses with a shrug. "Bait has to look like the real thing. Most scans can't tell lobotomized Replica from the real thing."

"You expect me to believe you?" she asks, and he shrugs.

"Name's Cayde-6. Run it."

Her head quirks to the side in slight confusion, and he guesses she's doing just what he suggested. Like a lot of people he meets, they don't see the truth until they run the numbers. Sometimes he wonders if the redacted parts make things worse or better.

Voiceprint comes back. Accent's a human one. Australian, whatever that is.

"Bounty hunter," she mutters as she finishes the search, and the blade hops back an inch. "You're after the mark on Vanarius too."

"Pest control, in my opinion," he replies. "Slavers don't last long these days. Batarians aren't in the business anymore, and humans and geth are too twitchy about it. They throw out such big bounties on these insults to organics."

"Just you against all seven of them?" she asks, and the blade moves away from him completely, the current switching off.

"Sights on, people," he replies.

Tiny red dots - active laser rangerfinders - light up on her helmet. Her head twitches a couple of times, tracking them back to the concealed sniper spots overhead. The _Paxterae's_ crew were exactly where he wanted them to be, just in case.

"Human. Krogan," she says. Then a pause, and a bit of surprise. "Quarian."

Cayde-6 points a finger directly overhead.

She looks up, and flinches. Most people do when they've got a military-grade point-defense gun leveled at them from the upper atmosphere.

"Geth," Cayde-6 says.

"Quite the crew," she murmurs, looking back toward him. "You hiring?"

"Always looking for talent," he says. "But fairness breeds fairness. I told you my name, what's yours, if you'd be so kindly?"

She slides the pistol back into a holster, and sheathes the blade over her shoulder.

"Miranda Lawson."

* * *

**The Hitter**

Omega's a lively place.

Less so in this little corner, seeing how everyone's unconscious.

The bar lies in shambles, courtesy of vigorous disagreements, copious alcohol, and the inevitable ensuing hilarity. Battered bodies of a dozen species on the floor, some damaged furniture, a couple of broken lights, mismatched bloodstains. The bar's built out of durable materials.

Medical teams are on the way, just as soon as they finish negotiating the price for their services. Doc Wagon's always ready to save your life, so long as you pass a credit check.

"How, exactly, did no one die today?" Cayde-6 asks, sitting at the ruined bartop, gently pushing aside an unconscious batarian with one foot. He saw more than a dozen guns drawn, some of them hilariously illegal outside of Omega. Shots were fired. Tables broken, knives and bludgeons wielded in a henceforth aggressive manner.

Bar brawls on Omega always ended up with at least a few people needing to either be resleeved or dumped in the recycling vats, after the Organ Grinders harvested what could be salvaged.

The human sitting a couple of chairs away is, apparently, the answer to that question.

No armor. Black hair coming down to his shoulders, black beard and moustache. Eyes the color of flint. He's wearing a blue sweater, black pants, military boots, stained here and there with blood. Knuckles are a bit bloody. Packing: a laser pistol and a kinetic submachinegun, pretty light by an Omega face-wrecker's standards.

Bartender's among the unconscious. The human slides Cayde a bottle plucked from behind the bar, and he flashes a credit chit through a scanner to pay for it. Cayde-6 plucks the bottle up - a nice salarian gold, hard on anyone without serious implants or a literally synthetic body. Some Exos get simulators installed that read the alcohol and mimic intoxication levels,

Cayde-6 pops open the bottle and takes a swig. Bright, spicy flavor, typical of the good salarian whiskeys.

The human draws a bottle of his own - asari blue, an expensive label, and scans his chit again. His hands move fast. Not gunslinger fast, like the quarian he's hearing rumors about, but with a quick, twitching smoothness. He's used to constantly running, moving, manipulating, faster than most can follow.

Every time someone drew a pistol, or fired a shot, or looked like they were going to kill someone with a knife or bludgeon, this human was there. Pulling the gun out of the way before delivering a knockout blow. Redirecting a club into a table or thin air. Catching and twisting aside a knife. Moving with uncanny speed.

Psionic. Physical, and a high-ranking one. Cayde-6 didn't see a lot of psychics out here. They were usually snapped up by one government or another with massive paychecks. Those that weren't were prime targets.

So what was someone like that doing here, saving lives on _Omega?_ Took a special breed of stupid or heroic to do something that pointless.

"You get into trouble like this often?" Cayde-6 asks. The human raises an eyebrow and shrugs. "'Cause you look like you do."

Medtechs are coming in. Scanning the patrons littering the smoke-choked bar, looking over vitals and getting everyone laid out on stretchers. Medigel gleams in the reddish light. Gang members will likely be swinging by soon, asking questions. Aria T'Loak may not enforce any laws, but only an idiot doesn't assume she keeps abreast of all the violence on her station.

"Name's Cayde-6. Want a job?" the Exo asks, standing up. "Need troubleshooters on my ship." He glances around the remains of the bar. "You look mighty capable, if I do say so."

The human nods and stands as well.

"You got a name?" Cayde-6 asks as they thread around the medics.

A name pops up on his AR display, hovering over the human's head.

"Well then, Mr. Spencer. Let's discuss your cut."

* * *

**The Doctor**

Noveria. Yet another wonderful world where your wounds clot because the blood freezes on your skin.

Its a planet where corporations go to avoid legal oversight. Corporate intrigue thrives amid the endless blizzards, and the distant lab facilities hidden among the mountain ranges are the safest retreats. The routes between the heavily-guarded research compounds are dangerous to travel, and periodically one finds shelters built into the rock along the treacherous land routes.

The snow drifts outside one such bunker embrace Cayde-6, covering almost his entire body beneath the camouflaged white thermal cloak. An organic would be dead by now, but he gave up his body long ago, and lies with the stillness of a synthetic, observing his scanners, a kinetic sniper rifle pressed to his shoulder.

Their vehicle burns a kilometer back, and a thin trail of dark blue blood leads this way. He's expecting someone to come sniffing through the blizzard, and he knows that they'll get here before Ellie can get the _Paxterae _through the mountains underneath the corps' anti-air coverage.

Extractions never go smooth.

Inside the bunker Lorik Qui'in, former rising star in the Synthetic Insights corporate ladder, lies on a makeshift medical table, a krogan's fingers working through his stomach and covered in his blue blood. The turian watches with detached interest, mostly numb to the pain due to plentiful drugs.

"This is a disconcerting situation," he remarks. The painkillers and instilled military discipline keep him from panicking, as he was just recently shot several times and now has one of the most feared species in the galaxy rooting about in his insides.

"Being hunted by corporate assassins usually is," the krogan replies, her tone deadpan. "For the first few centuries, at least. Hold still, and put down that weapon."

Those least words are the tone of a firm order, from someone accustomed to obedience. Qui'in obeys; seventeen years of office life and corporate politics never erased the training. He gently sets down the pistol he's been clutching in iron-hard fingers since Cayde-6 pulled him from the wreckage of his vehicle. They had figured the blizzard would cover the extraction of both Qui'in and the data that the Shadow Broker wanted.

That a krogan is repairing his innards with medigel and the uncomfortable sizzle of flesh burning under a laser scalpel proves that they were incorrect.

"You are not what I expected," Qui'in says as he stares at the harsh lights in the bunker's ceiling.

"Time has shown me that reality rarely matches expectation," Urdnot Bakara replies, both eyes locked on the turian's wounds and hands moving with dexterity that belies their thickness. She wears winter-camouflage armor, her head exposed. Scars mar the yellow flesh of her lower jaw, but beyond that, she looks like any other krogan. Sexual dimorphism was never a particularly strong trait among her species.

"How many doctors do the krogan have?" he asked.

"Too few," she murmurs. "Tuchanka is not the place one goes for in-depth medical studies. Not anymore."

"Then where did you study?" he asks, and clenches slightly as a spike of sharp agony cuts through the painkillers.

"Tuchanka," she replies. "Nine centuries teaches one much." Her head twitches. "A shaman must remember. Learn. Teach. We were not so broken a thousand years previously as we are today."

Silence for a few moments, save the whine of the scalpel and Qui'in's labored breathing. Then, a sharp crack comes through the bunker's walls. Bakara pauses for a moment, and resumes her work.

"Will I survive?" Qui'in asks.

"Cayde has killed one of them," Bakara replies. "More approach."

"You didn't answer my question," he replies.

"The wound is not fatal yet," she says. "If necessary, I have a cranial-preservation kit."

"How reassuring," Qui'in mutters. He could expect a clone body or an Exo if she had to resort to that. He had no desire to see the krogan turning that scalpel to full blast before she swept it through his neck.

He lay back again. Another gunshot outside. Bakara pauses again, likely talking to Cayde on her AR, before resuming her duties. He thinks for a moment on what she is, and the incongruity. Shamans rarely left Tuchanka, their wisdom and leadership too important to keep what fragments of krogan society that remained from imploding.

"Why are you with a rogue like Cayde?" he asks her.

She does not respond for a moment. Instead, Bakara raises a suture applicant and begins closing up the wound.

"You will live," she says. Cayde fires two more shots outside. "Assuming Ellie brings the ship in soon."

"You keep dodging my questions," he says. Both of her eyes lock onto his.

"I have flown with Cayde-6 for years," she says, and turns back to her work. Flesh burns and slides closed, medigel sealing the injuries and the sutures ensuring it.

"In that time, I have learned that he collects sapients of a like mind." She finishes and begins putting away her tools, quick and calm. "Skilled. Experienced. Unique."

She picks up a cloth and wipes the blood off her fingers. Stares at them for a moment.

"And most importantly," she ends, her tone quiet. "Those running from something. The past, their enemies. Often themselves."

"And what are you running from?" Qui'in asks.

She looks away, and the walls begin to vibrate faintly. She closes up her kit, and then scoops Qui'in up like a child.

"Nothing you would need to know," she growls. "The _Paxterae_ is here. Seal your armor and put on your helmet. It is unwelcoming outside."

* * *

**The Engineer**

"Hi! I'm you're new engineer!"

Cayde-6 manages something rare for a turian Exo of his age. He blinks.

The hangar on Omega is typical of its type. Big, dominated by a massive shape overhead about a hundred meters in length, all long bladed shapes. A continuous rain of sparks, the hissing of hydraulics, stenches of dozens of industrial reagents and oils making for a brutally acrid odor. That bone-shivering rumble of working machinery and engines. The ever shifting sense of vertigo when one moves from one area of particular gravity to another. It's familiar to him by now.

He turns at the voice. Its cheerful, friendly, sunny, and distinctly feminine.

His blue eyes widen a bit as he finishes, which for a turian is as big as they tend to get.

"Huh."

A geth looms over him. A yellow-and-pink-painted geth with a bright blue optical set. It is tall and lean, not a hulking brute like a Juggernaut. Its piping is pink and white, like the highlights along the body. The only part of it that isn't painted a nauseatingly cheery color is the heavy crate of tools and weapons bolted to its back.

Its hand shoots up, and Cayde steps back out of pure Omega-induced reasonability. The fingers extend like they're… awaiting a handshake.

"My name is Ellie!" the female voice says, and panels on the top and side of the flashlight head rise up.

The geth… has a name. And its is female.

"Huh," Cayde repeats, as articulate as ever, and he gingerly shakes the synthetic's hand. "Your mesh signature identified you as a human."

"It needs to be updated," Ellie said, the tone still strikingly cheerful, and the flashlight tracked up toward the ship. "Although seventy-eight percent of Omega citizens forge their mesh ID anyway, so I figured I would do my best to blend in."

"That's not how you blend in," Cayde muttered quietly as Ellie stepped around him.

"Normally, i don't recruit my engineers off the extranet and local job sources," he says more loudly as he follows the cheerful, female, referencing-themselves-in-singular-pronouns geth.

"Really?" Ellie says, her tone genuinely curious. It carries that child-like tone, and she rotates her head toward Cayde, petals wide. "How do you recruit them?"

"Word of mouth, mostly," he replies. Except that one time that he found one particularly bright prospect engaging in intimate relations with his then-current engineer underneath his engines.

But that was a long, long time ago.

"I would ask to clarify your qualifications, but…" Cayde shrugs. Come on, she was a _geth_. "What does a geth want with being an engineer on a little ship like mine anyway?"

"Experience! Research! Adventure!" Ellie's tone gets more eager with each word.

This geth is _exceptionally _nonstandard.

"And you'll find that on… a merc frigate?" he asks. Her flashlight bobs eagerly. That wasn't a word he ever thought he could seriously apply to a geth.

"Absolutely!" she says. "The Consensus can't learn without expanding its experience base! And the most effective way to expand its experience base is to work with alternate engineering and intellectual resources, particularly ones that diverge substantially from the galactic norm! Your ship and crew are ideal for that purpose!"

"You want on my boat because me and mine are… weird?" he asks.

"Exactly."

"Huh. Guess that makes sense." He pauses, considering for a moment, and then decides to hit the point on the nose.

"You're different from other geth. Why?"

"Rapid adaptation of existing software coupled with read-only isolation from the Consensus," Ellie says, bouncing back and forth on her synthetic heels. "Distinct viewpoints are best generated via organic development through experience that is not modified by continuous contact with established data sets."

"You separated from the other geth," he say slowly, "so you could form your own opinions?"

The flashlight whirrs, panels slowly folding in and out for a couple of seconds. Then the light bobs again.

"Yes!"

"Well, you're no weirder than anyone else on my boat. Welcome aboard, Ellie."

* * *

**The Captain**

The ruins are dark. Thin starlight shining in through the cracks. Old gray stone, still smooth in some places, pocked by rain and wind in others. A distant, reedy wind blowing outside, sometimes sneaking in. Olfactory reports a scent of must and moss, mixed with dust and fresh water.

He is the first to set foot on these stones in a long time. But the voice pushes him onward. A narrow fiber-optic line plugged into a recording device, taken from another ruin just like this one.

_Death doesn't have the same meaning for those with the Gift, and the will to hold on. That realization didn't come to me for a long time afterward._

The device is linked. The adapter manages to synch old alien tech to modern interfaces. It shouldn't have been so easy, but Ellie's good at her job, and modern designs still borrow a lot from the Protheans.

_I cannot see or feel, not through tactile senses, but in those final moments before the Temple collapsed into itself, victim to its own master's death, I connected to that... realm of un-reality that the Gift links us to. A place where science and reason - at least, that which we understand - fail._

His eyes gleam in the darkness as he follows he synchronized signal between this device and the one further in the ruins. Straight hallways, cleaved from ancient stone. Metal back the stone, and wiring threads the metal. But it is all cold stone, no embellishments. Protheans made their structures for purpose.

Like the object in his hands. A simple black shard of metal, glowing with millions of tiny green lines, many projected and hovering over its surface. Pure function, no artistry. Perhaps that's how it managed to survive in the cold, empty vacuum of a cold, long-abandoned ship.

Perhaps that was how it was able to record new data.

_Their thoughts race through the darkness and chaos, shaping into connecting filaments to one another. I can catch echoes through this reality, a place only the Gollop Chamber gave me a glimpse into before. Their concepts and ideas, utterly different from those of humanity._

How _this_ got onto a Prothean device is part of the reason why he's here. These coordinates, this recording fifty thousand years after the device's creators vanished…. There's a thousand universities that would go insane over this discovery. Governments would send fleets and armies for the chance to recover Prothean secrets.

The Shadow Broker sent Cayde-6.

He weaves the silent corridors, moving alone, save for the wafer of Prothean technology in his hand. Blue eyes pierce the shadows.

_But fear is universal._

He descends long, shallow steps. Energy readings ascend from far below, faint and distant. He pauses, releasing mapping drones into the ruins, and continues listening to the voice as he works.

_Something broke them. It descended upon them like they descended upon us. Their creations burned. Their people consumed. Screams of terror and pain still flash along their filaments in the other world, the void that laughs at our laws._

He descends after a time. His cloak rustles in the still air, his boots clipping on the stone. Distant wind, still whispering to him underneath the droning voice. Silence, save for those sounds.

_The slaughter was not complete. Not this time. Their gods abandoned them, and they fled into the spaces between stars and beyond their reality. And they came back… different._

He draws close to the machine at the heart of the ruins. But the shadows keep deepening. No light, save for his eyes.

_Saw the endless murder. Witnessed the unrelenting brutality. Cold metal. Living metal, chewing through everything that they had built. Some fled and hid. Some despaired and exiled themselves to the void. But some looked into that darkness…. and I see how they reacted._

A new sound: the shard is humming. Communicating, even as it tells the story. But the darkness remains.

_An empty gulf. Cold, relentless. Transforming those that lived, refining and remaking and processing. They saw something so evil that it scorned other evil, a pitch darkness that was deeper than the gaps between the stars themselves. And the only way to withstand such darkness… was to become it._

The pitch-blackness is too deep. Even Cayde-6 can't see, and while he carries illumination, he doesn't activate it. He hold his left hand out.

Golden light erupts, filling the chamber. A large black pyramid stands stark amid the stone, wreathed in the golden light. Old Prothean tech, whispering with the shard. And as the light touches it, it begins to seep into the cracks of the structure. Cayde watches it with fascination.

He's old, but the galaxy still holds wonder, even for someone who's seen what he has.

_I see now why they fed upon us. Why they obsessed over genetic and cybernetic transformation. Their gods abandoned them, and other gods destroyed them. In order to match their enemy, they had to become it._

The fire burns into the structure, and green and blue and gold and purple script begins flowing over the pyramid. The shard shivers, and lines trace between the two devices. Dozens, then hundreds, then thousands, hair-thin filaments of multicolored illumination.

He holds his hands up as the data pours into the shard. In his left, old Prothean tech, burning with the light its been waiting for for fifty thousand years.

In his right, a pistol, long-barreled, sleek, forged of sunfire and destruction.

_It does not forgive their crimes… but perhaps it explains them._

* * *

"That, Mister Shepard," Cayde-6 continues, loosing a faintly mechanical sigh, "Is going to be a long story. But it _starts_ with a crew..."


	16. The Grimoire: Part One

"I work for the Shadow Broker, sometimes," Cayde-6 says. "Broker pays good. Don't always know what the Broker wants, or what the endgame is, but the pay buys silence."

He leans forward, eyes narrowing slightly. It looks incongruous on a face that's supposed to be as rigid as a turian's skull-like mask.

"So you need to recognize the particular exceptionality of this conversation, Shepard."

* * *

_**The Grimoire: Part One**_

* * *

"The… Magnificent… Equestrian." A mechanical eyelid rose slightly. Turian faces lacked the expressiveness of softer-skinned species', and that went several times over for Exos. He turned and glanced at Spencer, looming next to him. "Am I reading that right?"

Spencer shrugged, face all emotive and cheerful like etched stone.

"Yep, Boss," Ellie's cheery tone came back, answering for the word-challenged Spencer. Even after more than a year with her as his chief engineer Cayde was still having a hard time reconciling "cheery" and "geth." Or "geth" and "individual." Or "geth" and "female." Or especially "Why did I let a geth on my ship in the first place?"

"I guess it sounds better in… what's this language? French?"

"Its got a tag on it that causes most language filters to not directly translate, Boss," Ellie replied, reading the inputs through his AR. "So it does sound better in its native tongue."

Spencer snorted.

"Whatever, then. Let's go in and meet Qui'in."

And thus Cayde-6 and Spencer walked toward the front door of a stupendously-expensive French restaurant on Illium. It was one of countless businesses that adorned one of the equally countless curving, elegant silver spires that defined Illium's skyline. A lot of the buildings here worked like they did on the Citadel Wards, big huge hive towers filled with businesses and homes that were accessed by aircars. The more expensive and high-class, the higher-up it went. Ground level on Illium or Ward-surface level on the Citadel was where the lower classes lingered.

The doorman was human, or wore a human-designed body. A lot of aliens loved experiencing each others' bodies for a change of pace. Or at least the rich ones did; Cayde-6 had no interest in swapping out of his Exo for a squishier body. Being synthetic had saved his life more times than he'd bothered counting.

"Reservation, sir?" the human doorman asked as they approached. Dark hair, swept-back and styled into a stylish wave, pencil-thin mustache, spotless vest and white dress shirt and black pants and glossy shoes and well-concealed sidearm in a chest holster that he could probably draw as fast as a drell, going by his stance.

The doorman peered at the Exo with a disapproving air, which mildly offended the turian. He'd worn his finest cloak for this meeting. Okay, it had a couple of bullet holes, but those added to the cloak's worth. Sure, Spencer wore a nice, clean, moderately expensive suit cut with the particular geometric angles that were all the fashionable rage now. But _cloaks_. They never went out of style.

Cayde-6 flashed the doorman his reservation, secured by Lorik Qui'in. On exceptionally short notice, which was exceptionally suspicious. Broker work tended to be that way.

"I see," the human said with a slow, but satisfied nod. "Please enter, and enjoy yourself, sirs."

Cayde-6 gave him an amicable nod and stepped through the glass doors into The Magnificent Equestrian, Spencer trailing just behind him. The interior was what he expected: expensive decor, polished wooden tables and expensive paneling, spotless white tablecloths, expensive painting, and at least two metric tons' worth of crystal. High, arching ceiling, tall, thin windows containing holographic projections of a glorious sunset sky. Gold and silver filigree worked into nearly every bit of wood he could see. Colossal chandeliers hovering overhead, built out of slowly spinning, polished vahlenite wheels and adorned with crystalline lights.

He spent a moment staring at those. He understood how it worked - mass effect fields could be amazingly subtle and well-hidden - but the _why_. Yeah, it was pretty, but it just looked like so much effort for something no one was likely to look at for more than a few seconds.

Rich people.

_Perimeter secure,_ Miranda messaged him from her spot outside, on a balcony overlooking the walkways outside. _No threats. Well, beyond the typical on Illium._

_Watch out for those contract ninjas, _Cayde-6 sent back.

_Wait,_ Ellie asked over their link to the _Paxterae_. _Do you mean contracted ninjas or ninjas armed with contracts?_

_This is Illium, so yes,_ Miranda replied, injecting deadpan emotion into the message.

"Your table, sir?" asked the human inside the doorway. He could have been the doorman's twin, right down to concealed sidearm. What was the human term for these guys? Something else in French. _Martyr-doom?_

"Lorik Qui'in, please," Cayde-6 replied, and the man nodded sharply and spun on his heel, striding briskly across the restaurant and its tiny tables with white cloths and crystalline dinnerware. Other patrons looked up at them as they passed, a few disapproving glances at his less-than-high-society attire, and quite a few more from asari who disapproved of an Exo being in the same room.

Cayde-6 didn't bother hiding the mandible spread and exposed teeth of amusement at offending the poor bio-conservatives' sensibilities. They'd eat food from some tiny single-planet human country but turn their noses up at tech that had been in action since before the quarians had been wiped out.

It wasn't really strange that a French restaurant showed up on Illium. Asari adored new cultures, in his observation; every time a new species showed up and brought in their particular ways, asari snapped it up like packs of starving varren. But a lot of them had been less happy to embrace all the other aspects of human culture. The general attitude among them were that augments were the things other species needed to catch up to the asari.

_Overwatch? _he messaged while following the human… whatever they were called to the table.

_Sky's clear,_ Ellie replied, her chipper voice sounding in his ear. _Stabby and Shooty are all in position._

_We need better callsigns,_ Miranda sent, her text tinged with annoyance.

_You're just mad you got dubbed Stabby,_ Mesa cut in from the garage. _Shouldn't I be on overwatch, boss?_

_No, I want you on extraction,_ Cayde-6 replied. _Last resort before we bring the ship in._

_I love being your last resort,_ she replied, with unconcealed satisfaction.

It might have been his long life with a turian personality, experience and instincts, but Cayde-6 tended to organize things in a process of escalation. Spencer and himself could deal with just about any small-scale threat. Miranda could tackle the bigger ones. Then their resident gunslinging quarian, followed by bringing in a (relatively) well-armed interstellar ship with Bakara and Ellie. He was really hoping they wouldn't need the latter, but they _were _on Illium, which was pretty much Omega but with expensive business suits. A pocket frigate, a krogan, and a geth Juggernaut might just be necessary.

Or it could just be paranoia. Good, old-fashioned paranoia. Saved his life and chassis plenty of times.

The… whatever-he-was led Cayde-6 and Spencer toward Lorik Qui'in's table. It was a small round setup with a fine white tablecloth and far too much crystal and expensive, genuinely-silver utensils and plates. Qui'in was already seated, pouring himself some wine into the narrow, cylindrical glasses that turians favored.

_Children, please mind the chatter,_ Cayde sent as he walked over, Spencer silently trailing behind. _The adults are talking now. _

He didn't need to imagine Ellie pouting on the other end, which was strange, because she didn't have lips, or anything really resembling a face.

"Cayde," Lorik said as he approached, mandibles twitching outward in genuine happiness. "Always a pleasure."

"Likewise," the Exo replied as he settled into his chair, tucking his cloak underneath him. Qui'in's appearance had changed; aside from his face paint shifting to black and yellow, cosmetic surgery had altered his facial proportions to make his face leaner. He wore a dark blue and gray business suit, cut to fit close to his lean turian frame. The paint marked his new official job as sector manager of Morgan Artificial Neurostructures - a position he'd acquired with a little help from their mutual patron. Of course, the turian's real job was why they were at the table. Someone had to be the go-between to handle meetings for high-priority operations, after all.

"Care for a drink?" the once-manager of Synthetic Insights asked, holding up a glass bottle with a dark yellow-gold tinge. "Katis Gold. Asari-human make, but dextro-formulated. Excellent label."

"Sure," Cayde-6 replied, holding up the glass on his side of the table. As Lorik filled it, he continued.

"They have an excellent meat selection here, some of it imported directly from Palaven."

"Hoping I won't be here long enough for them to cook a steak I don't need to eat," Cayde-6 said. He didn't have skin anymore, otherwise he might have started itching around his crest in annoyance at the small talk.

"One always needs to keep in mind the pleasures of life," Lorik said. "You don't come with taste sensors installed standard for tactical applications."

Cayde-6 didn't say anything, instead taking a sip from the glass. While he did so, Lorik reached into his fine coat and produced a small disc. Cayde-6 caught a brief flicker of movement next to him from Spencer, but it stopped almost before it began - at least from his perspective. Psychics had their own unique ways of viewing the universe. Spencer went back to his relaxed stance once he was satisfied Qui'in wasn't drawing a weapon.

Qui'in set it down in the center of the table, and tapped a button the top of the disc. A faint, high-pitched hum filled the air immediately around them, and static crept into the edges of his vision for a moment before his chassis' sensory systems compensated for the privacy field's interference. Spencer took a couple of steps back away from the small dome-shaped area of effect, sending a quick signal to the rest of the team so they wouldn't freak out over the abrupt loss of feeds, and then waited outside in case something happened that needed Cayde-6's attention.

"The galaxy just became a far more interesting place," Qui'in mused, his tone edging toward a bit more serious.

"Galaxy's always interesting," Cayde-6 replied. "It's just a matter of whether that interesting gets you paid or killed."

"The Ethereals on Proteus have caused a stir," Qui'in said.

"You are _truly _the master of understatement, Lorik," Cayde-6 said with a gallant nod. "But, quick question. Does the Broker want us to go after them? I need to know if that's the job, so I can record me laughing for five minutes straight and send it on as my answer."

"Thankfully, no," Qui'in said, mandibles twitching in amusement. "This job is less blatantly suicidal, but it is time-sensitive and of extreme importance."

"Lay it out," the Exo said, taking a sip of his wine.

"How much do you know about the quarian extinction?" Qui'in asked.

"The same as everyone else. Ethereals wiped 'em out. Geth survived. Humans, geth, and all the other species got together to bring 'em back. One of 'em's on my crew and applying ballistic solutions for the last year or so." Cayde-6's glowing eyes narrowed as much as they could as he realized where he was going with this. "You're sending me after their fabled sanctuary, right? Oronvo?"

"Oronvik," Qui'in corrected. Cayde-6 nodded, carefully hiding his worry. "The Broker had assets embedded on a Thessia University expedition checking a possible Prothean site in the Hades Nexus sector."

"Right between the Traverse and the Terminus. Dangerous territory." Cayde-6 began wondering just how deep this one was going to get. "Star?"

"Hoplos system," Qui'in said, and Cayde-6 immediately ran it against his omnitool's onboard star charts. "It was recently decoded from an old Prothean astrographic database, and the team was eager to search it before anyone else got wind of the discovery and looted the site."

"And only a couple of relay hops from the Perseus Veil," Cayde-6 added as he checked the sector and the data. "What happened?"

"This expedition arrived and began surveying the system. Broker assets onboard began searching for Oronvik clues. Then, they went dark for three weeks." Qui'in's voice lost any hint of playfulness, and Cayde-6 understood. They both knew that the Broker had a particular interest in this mystery, and in archaeology in general. A particular obelisk he'd ventured out to find recently came to mind.

"Yesterday, the expedition ship activated its quantum communicator," Qui'in said. "A distress call. Only now it is reporting from Kyza, in the Shrike Abyssal."

Cayde-6's mandibles tightened in surprise and confusion. That was on the completely opposite side of the galaxy from the Hades Nexus.

"Broker records show no signs of the ship moving through monitored relays between the two sectors. And it reported a mission-complete as part of its distress signal," Qui'in finished. "They found something pointing toward whatever Oronvik is."

"This is a rescue and recovery op, then," Cayde-6 asked, concealing his relief. No tomb-robbing this time. "Broker's got to have other assets closer to the Shrike Abyssal than us, though."

"Yes, they do," Qui'in said, and leaned forward a bit. "But they aren't _you_."

"Well, no one wears a snazzy cape quite like me, I agree," the Exo replied. Yeah, he hated these particular missions. Couldn't the Broker find someone other than him for these jobs? It was a big galaxy; surely someone else had the experience, machinery, and undeniable fashion sense needed to carry out lunatic missions like this.

"Let me guess:" Cayde-6 continued. "Rescue personnel, loot the ship of anything relating to the research, and escape before scavengers can come sniffing?"

"Recover the ship if possible," Qui'in added. "The Broker wants every scrap of data you can recover. Even radiation-modified hull composition could be useful."

"Shoot it to me," the Exo said, activating his omnitool. Qui'in did the same, and laser transceivers mounted on the devices synched up for data transfer. Trying to transmit normally was unsafe, and within the privacy field was outright impossible. Within a few seconds the mission data had finished, and Cayde-6 started flicking through the information. Navigation information, location of the ship, personnel roster. Team lead: one Doctor Liara T'Soni.

At that moment, Spencer slid back into the privacy field, and when Cayde-6 glanced up, the human tapped his chest where his sidearm was holstered inside his coat.

"Well," the Exo said, deadpan. "Crap."

"Company," Qui'in muttered, and they both rose to their feet. "You or me?"

"Hey, I covered my tracks," Cayde-6 replied while Qui'in grabbed and switched off the privacy field.

"You walked into a French restaurant wearing a bullet-riddled cloak and hood," Qui'in shot back, and Cayde-6 shook his shoulders, causing the aforementioned garment to billow dramatically for an instant. Data poured in from Miranda's overwatch position outside, and it didn't look good.

"Well, at least they waited until the meeting was done," Cayde-6 said. "Spencer, will you get the door?"

* * *

Miranda peered down across the pedestrian street outside The Magnificent Equestrian, hidden under the cover of a Stalker active camouflage cloak. As with all the asari-engineered spires, the building that housed the restaurant and hundreds of other upper-class businesses was an elegant white tower of gentle curves rising up into the sky, surrounded by a continuous flow of aircars. The gentle ascending slopes were actually the walls and overhangs that protected the countless people moving through the open-air walkways ringing the building.

The cloaked human's eyes and her armor's sensors scanned the flowing crowds from a level above, sitting on one of the sloping overhangs with a line of sight on the entrance to the restaurant. The scanners observed and collated massive amounts of input and filtered it down to either relevant data to feed her - element zero masses, strong power sources, electromagnetic fields, elerium radiation, and the like - or anomalies for her to check. Her eyes, meanwhile, hunted for things that even sophisticated sensors and computers would miss. The sorts of things only an assassin would notice.

Like the group of humans walking toward the restaurant, outwardly innocuous, but who caught her eyes immediately.

The majority of the population on Illium were asari, but roughly a third of the people who lived there - many of them short-term transients or corporate salary-beings - were of other species. Humans were the newest arrivals, and had made their presence known, so it wasn't that strange to see six human men in business attire walking down a spire-street toward an expensive restaurant.

What was unusual was that six of them were Replica.

That fact wasn't advertised. They wore business attire of differing colors and cut. Two of them wore hats, three had beards or moustaches. There was some variation in skin tone and height, indicating whoever had assembled them had purchased from either different lots or from a specialized covert-ops line that included differentiation in the clone line. Thus, no one on the street noticed that the group of humans included pre-programmed cloned suicide assassins.

But Miranda Lawson was intimately familiar with the Replica. A dozen minor tells in their gait and disposition, plus the purposeful way they walked and glanced about, betrayed the programming that had been inserted into their developing brains during their cloning tube infancy. And no one bought a Replica for a civilian job; the normal human was likely their controller.

As they approached the restaurant - and Miranda was certain that was their destination - she pinged Spencer and Mesa and fed them the visual data, while running a closer scan on them. Element zero masses, indicative of low-profile kinetic barriers and pistols, and a couple of stronger power sources, indicating laser pistols.

_Miranda?_ Cayde-6 messaged her a couple of seconds later, and she sent him the data.

_Replica approaching the building. Armed. It's going to be a bloodbath if they start shooting._

_Understood. We're coming out._

_You need me up there, boss?_ Mesa asked.

_Nah_, he replied._ There's only six of them, and Spencer's got the door._

_I can take them now,_ Miranda suggested.

_No, keep an eye out for backup,_ Cayde-6 sent back. _Like I said-_

The door to the restaurant opened as the group of assassins approached the entrance, and Spencer stepped outside, his face impassive behind his visor.

_He's got this._

Spencer took off his visor as the Replica and their controller stepped onto the red carpet leading into the restaurant. They didn't slow, but one of the Replica stepped around the controller, moving as though it was going to shove him aside The restaurant's doorman started to step forward, likely to demand invitation, but paused when Spencer held out his free hand to stop him.

Cayde-6's resident hitter then gave a vague smile, and flicked his visor toward the lead Replica. The clone's hand snapped up and batted the visor up and over its shoulder, almost on reflex.

And Spencer _blurred._

He streaked right into the Replica, left arm flashing up. His omnitool lit up, forming a dual-layer protective barrier over his forearm, and in a flash of blue-shifted light, he smashed his shielded knuckles straight through the Replica's kinetic barrier and into its face. The Replica's head snapped back, blood and teeth spraying from the impact. Spencer's right hand grabbed its left, which had begun to rise in reflexive defense, and he spun, grabbing the front of the Replica's suit, and hurled the clone into the group's human controller.

The body had barely left the ground when Spencer was rushing around it into the next clone, whose hand was drawing its sidearm from its shoulder holster inside its suit. Spencer's left hand grabbed the Replica's wrist, pinning it against the chest, while his left foot slammed down into its knee. The clone's eyes widened in shocked pain as the knee shattered, but it didn't get the chance to cry out in pain, as Spencer's right fist was pulverizing its nose.

The Replica's fingers pulled the trigger on its sidearm, but Spencer spun the body as the shot was fired, and the bright red beam scythed through another Replica's upper leg. Spencer released the unconscious clone and twisted on his left leg, right flying up to kick the Replica's controller in the back of his neck as the man was pushing away the body that had been thrown at him.

As the man's knees buckled and he toppled face-first to the carpet, Spencer was already leaping over the Replica whose leg had been severed by its companion's laser, the psychic slamming his left foot into the clone's face. The pistol it was drawing flew away from slack fingers, midday light flashing off its vahlenite casing.

He hit the carpet right in front of the last pair of Replica as their pistols were clearing their holsters. His hands shot up, grabbing the wrist of the fourth clone and twisting, shattering bone and twisting tendons with raw velocity and strength. He immediately ducked and sidestepped as the last Replica turned to bring its pistol to bear, and rabbit-punched the clone in the gut with his left fist, followed by an uppercut to the jaw. His left hand swept up, grabbing the clone's gun hand and yanking down, and the laser beam flashed into the pavement a couple of meters away, spraying half-molten debris in a burst of heat and sound.

Spencer reached up and snatched his visor as it descended toward him, sliding the AR glasses back onto his head, and then turned and punched the last Replica in the face with a fist wreathed in flashing blue. It toppled to the pavement amid the echoing screams and cries of shock from the rapidly-dispersing pedestrians around the restaurant.

_That never gets old,_ Miranda messaged, lip turning up in appreciation.

_Rawr,_ Mesa agreed. _Oh, sorry, you can't see, I'm making these little kitty paws, because that was so sexy._

Spencer smiled and gave a slight bow in Miranda's direction, as Cayde-6 and Lorik Qui'in stepped out of the building, passing the stunned doorman. The Exo pulled out a credit chit and tossed it his way, and they picked their way over the carpet of unconscious clones.

"Good man," Cayde-6 said. "Let's get moving. Mesa, if you would fetch our ride."

_On the way boss._

"Move fast, stick to cover," Cayde-6 added. "Nonlethal force unless we got no choice."

_Nonlethal, even for Replica?_ Miranda asked. Replica existed in a legal gray area, particularly on Illium where the law was gray across the board, but killing them generally wasn't considered murder. Below, Cayde-6 and Lorik Qui'in were hurrying away from the restaurant, Spencer just ahead of them. The street was clearing quickly, and Miranda had to rise and begin moving to keep up.

"I'd rather not risk it, even if we're bolting off-planet very shortly," Cayde-6 added. "If you can, take 'em out alive. If not-"

He was cut off by the roar of heavy lift engines, the kind that went on cargo trucks instead of the vastly quieter engines of civilian aircars. A big, rectangular delivery truck marked as belonging to one of hundreds of local delivery chains roared down, swinging directly overhead. A side loading door folded up, and Miranda could see several men in gray combat fatigues with tactical plate armor leaning out with laser and kinetic rifles.

It was impossible to miss from below, and Cayde-6 was already talking.

"Mir-"

But she's already designated a corridor between herself and the vehicle, and her armor had also run a workup of the vehicle, its model, mesh ID, and schematics. Miranda took, to her perspective, a single quick step forward, but to all outside observers, she exploded into a raging blue streak of fury and exploded into the vehicle's windshield, sending the truck slewing sideways from the impact of the biotic charge.

The driver, a human male of utterly unremarkable features and shaved head, regarded her for an instant. A feminine figure in dark gray armor with yellow highlights from her armor's emitters, black hair whipping in the wind, a faceless mask covering her features, and wreathed in blue light from her biotics, crouched on the hood of his truck. His eyes narrowed, as though she were a particularly large insect that crashed into the cracked glass of his windshield, and he snatched up a pistol from his hip.

Which meant yet another Replica. Likely the men in the truck were too.

The Replica drew fast, but Miranda's pistol was already in her right hand, and she shot the clone in the forehead through the impact glass before the gun cleared its holster. She drove forward, smashing through the glass, and drove her right hand into the metal above the control panel. The truck began to spin, but she was already releasing monofilament cables from her right hand omnitool, accessing the truck's computer.

It was a purely civilian vehicle, probably stolen within the last hour, and had no cybersecurity suite worth mentioning. She took control instantly and directed the vehicle's flight computer into a direct downward descent. Letting it simply fly out of control with no driver would risk too many civilian lives. The engine pitch changed, and the truck abruptly fell toward the spire-street.

_Cayde, get clear!_

_Am clearing, am clearing like hell!_ he sent back.

The door into the cargo compartment flew up, and an exact copy of the Replica she'd just killed filled the entry, laser rifle rising up.

Miranda released control of the truck- autopilot would do the rest - while firing her pistol at the clone from less than a meter away. Its shields were up, and the first couple of shots only deflected off its barriers, but they were enough to blind the Replica so that its first shot missed her face. The scarlet beam speared her in the chest, ablative plate flaring white hot as she pulled herself out of the driver's compartment and leapt up.

She landed lightly on the cargo compartment while the truck descended, and her right hand went to her back, unlocking and drawing the high-frequency blade she carried. She'd barely dawn her sword when bullets and laser beams flashed up through the roof of the truck. Obviously, the Replica were tac-networked, and the simplicity of their minds lent them to terrifyingly efficient response times.

The street was coming up fast, and bullets were bouncing off her shields; her one blessing was that they didn't know exactly where she'd landed. She leapt sideways, off the side of the truck as the street shot up, and hit a moment after the truck. A deafening crash and scream of metal on ceramic hit her ears, forcing audio compensators to kick in, and Miranda half-rolled, half-skidded along the ground, her plating scraping on the pavement in microcosm of the ear-rending cry of the crashing truck.

The Replica would be shaken up, but be right back to shooting in seconds, regardless of the crash. She bolted to her feet, rushing toward the truck. Any second they would be spilling out and start firing, and she doubted they would care who was backstopping their shots.

Her blade flashed into the metal of the truck, one, two, three messy cuts tearing a triangular gash into the compartment, the edges white hot, and she kicked it in. It bounced off a Replica inside, and she leapt through the gap, landing among the clone soldiers.

The compartment was six meters long, and contained seven Replica, all turning toward her. Miranda Lawson didn't hesitate, and her sword leapt and cut. Armor was rent in flares of golden white, and blood erupted from cleaved bodies.

_Stabby!_ Ellie messaged cheerfully, watching her feeds and the Replica body parts flying about the compartment.

_Stop that,_ Miranda sent back in annoyance as she finished her work.

* * *

"Well, that's taken care of," Cayde-6 said as he, Qui'in, and Spencer made their way down the street. "Two squads of Replica accounted for, so that means at least a third as a blocking force. Plus reserves."

The crowds were clearing out and running away for the most part, save for a number of onlookers. Cayde-6 marked them and kept moving. Law enforcement would be en route; upper class areas always had a speedy response time.

"Assuming this was a turian-planned operation," Qui'in said.

"Always prepare for the worst case," Cayde-6 said.

"Then assume a krogan planned the attack," Qui'in muttered.

"Oh, we can rule that out," Cayde-6 said with good cheer. "The building's still standing."

Spencer scowled, holding up a hand for them to pause as he launched microdrones to check an alley access ahead.

"Yes, indeed, always look at the bright side," the Exo agreed with his human compatriot.

Spencer blurred again, bolting forward, arms weaving in flashing motions. A submachinegun flew over his shoulder, and another human in plainclothes stumbled out of the alley. There was a meaty impact, and Cayde-6 caught another human body crumpling in the mouth of the alley, and Spencer whirled, mass effect fields flaring around his arms as he pummeled yet another Replica in bloody unconsciousness.

"How many of them are there?" Qui'in asked, appropriating the submachinegun where it lay.

"However many the guys who want us dead can afford," Cayde-6 replied, stepping past Spencer and checking down the alley. It was a narrow route between sections of the spire, but too tight for his liking. He stepped back out and turned around, and sighed when he saw at least one of the non-panicking onlookers reaching into a coat.

"Distraction," he muttered as two turians, three humans, an asari, and a pair of salarians who had been crouching behind cover or cowering in doorways began drawing laser and kinetic pistols.

"Nonhuman Replica!" Lorik snarled, raising his submachinegun, but Spencer grabbed him by the back of his coat and yanked him toward a doorway into an electronics store. Cayde-6 ducked back into the alley right before a pair of laser beams would have resulted in an inconvenient decapitation.

"This is monumentally unfair," the Exo growled, and reached down to his lower back, underneath his cloak.

_Ellie, bring the _Pax_ in now, things have gotten ugly. Mesa, extraction now! These boys are getting serious._

Form followed function, across all species, and this was true of weapons. There were slight differences, depending on biology; a krogan sword was naturally larger and had more inherent leverage to get under bone plate, for example. But everyone's weapons were similar. The sword, the spear, the bow, the musket.

The revolver.

Cayde-6 liked the classics, and the revolver never went out of style, especially one made to kill krogan with raw kinetic force. Simple mechanics, simple maintenance, and very oversized rounds. Gray-black base casing, action and barrel plated in polished bronze alloy, barrel nearly as long as his forearm, built-in element zero compensators to absorb recoil through increased mass. It was a magnificent piece of work, not made by his hand but purchased with blood, effort, and more than a few shattered, sparking limbs. A gun only an Exo could carry without exhaustion, a weapon only an Exo could fire without breaking an arm.

It was a weapon that had earned a name.

Cayde-6 rolled out of cover, and the Last Word spoke.

* * *

From overhead, the ongoing disaster below looked small and insignificant, but they tended to when they were less than a minute or so in progress.

Mesa'Kolar was intimately familiar with disasters, and she watched this particular one unfold with detached concern as she brought the aircar in for extraction. Her head bobbed in time to an asari pop song that had gotten stuck in her head while she watched Spencer do his punchy thing, Miranda do her choppy thing, and Cayde break out that wonderful hand cannon of his.

The humming of the aircar's engine sounded faintly over the audio feeds from the gunfight below, and the spire of the building slowly turned around the right window as Mesa'Kolar brought their escape vehicle down toward the building. Cayde-6 had called her in for pickup, but they had half a dozen options for landing and, despite the gunfire, the boss hadn't made the call yet. They wanted to keep the extraction relatively discreet, which was why she was sticking to designated traffic lanes-

_Mesa, extraction now! These boys are getting serious._

-and a wild grin split her face as she gave the traffic laws a giant, figurative dump and slewed out of the aircar lane, diving toward the building. Flashing warnings indicated immediate fines that would never, ever be paid, being levied by incensed air traffic VIs. She auto-dismissed them while she dove toward the building, and quickly checked her sidearms while the autopilot plotted a course it was decrying as "extremely risky and violating all known insurance policies."

Whatever, not like it was _her_ car that had been stolen, right?

One, two. Four. Seven, eight… twelve, sixteen…. yes, all her guns accounted for.

_What kind of opposition, boss?_ she messaged, readying herself.

_Kinetic barriers, strong. Personal armor, low-profile._

_What about their faces?_ she asked. _Are their faces armored?_

_No. Please punish them for that oversight, wouldja?_

Mesa let out a light giggle, a laser pistol sliding into each hand. She accessed the door controls, tweaked the approach so that the car would swing in between Cayde-6's position and all the badguys shooting at him, and-

Her threat assessment programs built into her hardsuit VI suddenly flashed an image, oriented above and to her left. Another air truck, its side door opening, and a hulking figure in gray armor looming in the cargo compartment. It wore thick, camo-patterned plating on most of its body, along with rounded, hump-like plates across its back that housed massively-powerful kinetic barrier generators. A set of cylindrical, glowing sensors were mounted on the front its dome-shaped helmet.

"Hey, Replica with a heavy laser cannon," she remarked, her tone nonchalant, and jerked the aircar sideways.

The enormous Replica soldier shifted his aim, swinging the heavy cannon around. It was a classic design: multiple laser barrels that were cycled through coolers to allow anti-vehicle-grade fire to be concentrated on a target. The kind of gun you needed strength assist frames, heavy gene-engineering, or be a krogan to lift.

So when the Replica pulled the trigger, scarlet beams punched through Mesa's aircar, accompanied by plumes of white-hot molten metal and ceramics. She snarled out a couple of curses in her own language, while popping open the door. A red beam flashed through the metal a few centimeters too close, but she ignored the burning pain flaring along her cheek.

"I just stole this!" she hissed, snapped up her laser pistol, and put two quick shots through the Replica's helmet sensors from her sidearm.

Mesa juked again while the Replica recoiled, and checked the range between the two moving aircraft. They were seventy meters apart, but the distance opened up as the truck suddenly began to pull up, while her aircar began to drop toward the gun battle below. She glanced back at the controls, and saw emergency hover thrusters were trying to fire, as the main engine and element zero core had been knocked out.

And with a final, pained cough, the car began to fall.

"Crap," Mesa muttered, holstering her weapon. She waved her omnitool over the controls, setting the car to emergency crash mode. She grabbed the edge of the door, the car's thrusters firing haphazardly while its autopilot directed the vehicle toward the nearest clear spot of flat ground - which meant the wide walkway directly below, where Cayde-6 and the rest of the crew were shooting it out with the Replica.

_Boss, gotta scrub that extraction._

The vehicle's descent wasn't terminal, but it was coming in fast. Instinct told her to just drop out of the car once it was close enough, but she didn't have the gear for that. Instead, she braced herself as the car park rushed up, the autopilot aiming to put the vehicle between the wall of stores and the curving, gentle slope of the raised barriers of the balconies.

_Mesa?_

_Coming in hot, boss,_ she sent as she braced, drawing and clenching a laser pistol in an iron-hard grip.

Then, _noise _and _pain_. The former, a screaming wail of metal and ceramics grinding and cutting past one another. The latter sharp and violent, the quarian yanked violently in her restraints when the car first hit the rooftop. The aircar spun around once, skidding across the landing pavement, and then crunched to against something a hell of a lot harder than shrubbery and plastic benches. The car snapped around in the opposite direction, and as it spun she caught sight of one of the non-human Replica, a salarian, firing a pistol toward Cayde-6's position.

She flicked her own weapon up and took the Replica's head off as the car skidded and spun past, a scarlet beam blowing apart its skull. The car crunched again as it hit the outer railing of the walkway, and a flash of white pain lanced through Mesa's head as it bounced off the headrest.

She blinked, shaking her head, and ignored the pain rolling through her skull. She detached the restraints, pushing herself up and dropping into a crouch next to the car. No broken bones, as far as she could tell, but there were going to be a million bruises.

Eh, not the worst crash she'd been in. No one died. She drew another laser pistol from her back hip holsters, the handgun folding out into firing configuration.

_Mesa? What happened?_ Cayde-6's message came in accompanied by a rapid-fire burst of deeply powerful gunshots, the kind that shook your internal organs if you stood too close to the gun.

_Got shot down, boss_,she sent back. _Heavy Replica with a laser cannon. Who did you piss off?_

_This week? I'unno. One sec._ A couple of quick gunshots._ Ellie's bringing the ship in, but we're pinned down out here._

_All right, then,_ Mesa sent._ Let me deal with this._

* * *

Cayde-6 had managed to down a couple of the Replica. The Last Word was a convincing one, discussing matters with their kinetic barriers, persuading them to drop with the resolute certainty of kinetic energy, and then politely explaining to their internal organs how they were to rearrange themselves.

The Replica themselves objected, of course. And what they lacked in convincing arguments, they made up for in numbers and volume.

Cayde-6 rolled back behind the alleyway, flipping open the Last Word's chambers and venting the heat sinks. The rotating chamber meant he could fan the hell out of the hammer and put out a lot of high-powered kinetic rounds, but they had to vent at some point. He snapped the chamber closed as he spotted one of the Replica moving around the street outside - an asari clone, sticking to the low cover of benches and public-access kiosks and shrubbery gardens lining the center of the road.

Everyone always overengineered their stuff, which was why Cayde-6 held his fire until the asari rose up from cover, sighting down at him. The Exo already had her in his own crosshairs, and fanned the hammer as he pulled the trigger, cycling heat sinks with machine speed. The Last Word took two hits to breach her kinetic barriers and two more - one through the neck and one through the left cheek - to drop the clone. She fell to the spotless white pavement, blood spilling out over the tiles.

But more kept showing up, running from the scattering crowd. They'd downed five so far - Cayde's three, Mesa's one as she crashed, and Qui'in killing another - yet by now there were seven plain-clothes, mixed-species Replica shooting at them, not counting however many were still en route on foot or aircar. Someone either got a bulk discount or really, _really _wanted one of the two turians dead.

_Bringing the ship in, Cayde!_ Ellie sent him. _Traffic VIs are very unhappy._

_It's for a good cause,_ Cayde-6 said as he snapped off another couple of shots at the Replica before they drove him back into cover.

_Yay! Violating municipal traffic regulations is fun!_

On his tactical display, Cayde-6 could see the other Replica shifting positions with eerie coordination. It wasn't communication, but ingrained, pre-programmed responses, each of the clones moving to cover angles left open by the death of their companion. He couldn't see a controller or Replica coordinator, if there was one.

_Be ready to cover us,_ he messaged Ellie. _Replica with heavy weapons._

And then Mesa stepped around the remains of her car, a pair of laser pistols in hand, and did that thing that Cayde paid her to do.

Four of the Replica whirled toward her with that uncanny coordination, raising their pistols and starting to shift their positions to put cover between themselves and the neo-quarian. Two of the clones managed a single step before Mesa put a scarlet beam through their foreheads.

Sensory films showed their gunslinging heroes as flashy and spectacular, or hard and brutal. Rolls, leaps, spins, and fancy gun stunts, intermixed with moving through cover, stylized exchanges of lasers and bullets, artful sprays of blood and sparks and random flying fauna. They were dancers, engaging in choreographed struggles as beautiful as any martial arts duel. It made the battles something worth experiencing for the audience.

Mesa'Kolar just shot the Replica in the face, one by one.

The neo-quarian killed with the unerring precision of a machine. A twitch of muscles, a squeeze of a trigger, and a Replica's skull intersected a laser beam, flesh scorching and exploding and a body falling to the ground. It was butcher's work, although a meat-chopper expended more effort than she did in ending lives.

Scything laser fire tracked across the street, and seven Replica died in less time than it took to state the fact.

It was only when the last clone hit the ground that she fancifully spun her pistols around her trigger fingers and slid them back into their holsters.

_Tell me again,_ Mesa messaged, and turned toward Cayde-6. _Why I'm not your first resort?_

* * *

Cayde-6 and his crew didn't waste time. Miranda, finished with her own bloody work, rejoined them in a flash of azure biotic power, and the whole group skedaddled.

It was a simple tactical calculation. The Replica, or rather whoever had sent them, had chosen this ground to attack. That was bad ground, for obvious reasons, and they had to get clear, especially with at least one air truck flying around with an angry Replica toting a heavy laser cannon. There was no determining how many more irate clones with murderous marching orders were on the way.

That was the _thing_ with untraceable organic drones that could pass for any species. They let anyone with enough money just throw disposable bodies at a problem until it was buried in a hail of bullets.

The spire had service corridors branching off the "alleys" between shops and suites, for employees, support staff, and storage. The imposing "Employees Only" holo over the locked door proved no match for a high frequency blade. Cayde-6 kicked the pieces of the door out of the way, the edges of the metal glowing reddish-gold where Miranda's sword had carved them apart, and he took the lead into the passage beyond.

The bowels of asari architecture were similar to most Citadel species. Relatively dim, utilitarian corridors lined with crates, boxes, and moving equipment. Semi-polished reflective floors marred by constant passage. The faint scent of lubricants and cleaning fluids, plus a hint of ozone from electronics. Cayde-6 took the lead alongside Miranda, the latter because she could move _fast_ to engage and the former because he could afford to lose a lot more bits than his organic companions. Spencer stayed with Qui'in in the middle to protect him, while Mesa covered their rear.

It had been less than three minutes since Spencer threw the first punch. Illium police response would be quick, but with the amount of violence they'd likely wait for a special weapons unit to arrive before coming in hard. Cayde wanted his people out of here before that happened and the police started trading shots with the remaining Replica.

The service corridors were a labyrinth, but Miranda was deploying scout microdrones as fast as her omnitool could assemble them. Cayde had picked out a car park hangar on the other side of the spire as their pickup point.

_Contact_, Mesa sent, followed by a single discharge of laser fire in the corridor behind them. _Neutralized. This one was armored in a hardsuit._

"Not even trying to be subtle now, are they?" Cayde-6 muttered. _Ellie?_

_Two minutes, boss!_

_Bakara?_

_We are ready to cover you, Cayde. Do not get killed before we arrive._

_You say the sweetest things._

Two turns, another locked door that Miranda bypassed in her particular way, and they emerged into the aircar hangar.

It wasn't like a parking garage for terrestrial vehicles. The hangar was mostly open, with a ceiling sloping diagonally to allow aircars to descend and land, rising to about ten meters overhead at the farthest point. More than a hundred aircars filled the wide, single-level chamber, a generous amount of space between each vehicle to let them land safely. It was obviously the place for people with the money to shovel out for a reserved space, as most of the cars were shiny and expensive, with dazzling, polished paint jobs and interiors with more quality than five-star hotels. The glittering skyline of Illium spread out on the far side of the building, the spire itself blocking the setting sun and casting the collection of cars into shadows illuminated by lines of lights running between the rows of parked aircraft.

The whining howl of more laser fire cut through the air behind them.

_Mesa?_

_Lots of badguys._ Another burst of laser fire. _Very determined badguys._

_There's no other type of Replica,_ Miranda replied.

"Mesa's got our backs covered," Cayde said as they moved into the garage. "Spread out and find cover. Ellie's gonna be here in a moment, and-"

Heavy lift engines rumbled from open end of the parking garage, and a quartet of cargo trucks matching the ones who had been dropping Replica earlier rose up into view. Their sides slid open, armored shapes moving within the cargo bays.

"-and I knew that was going to happen. Scatter!"

The hulking forms of Replica Heavies loomed in the bays of two of the trucks, while a mixture of human and turian Replica emerged from the vehicles, clad in the same nondescript, mass-produced gray and tan armor as their compatriots. Some of them raised their rifles, while the majority leapt down into the hangar. Within seconds, no less than two dozen clones were moving among the cars while Cayde's crew scattered, taking cover behind a few million credits worth of luxury transport.

An instant later, two raging, blindingly-bright lines of red light ripped across the garage, courtesy of the Heavies and their laser cannons. Polished paint melted and armorglass shattered, electronics and fuel cells flashing and detonating in roaring bursts of fire and ripping shrapnel. The other Replica advanced under the covering fire, a barrage of laser and kinetic fire slicing toward Cayde's crew. Some of the clones were carrying rifles or shotguns, and a number were deploying omnishields, advancing under bobbing, glowing orange-white kinetic barriers that burned through the smoke and dust and debris filling the garage.

Cayde-6 crouched behind the engine compartment of an aircar, the Last Word gripped in tight mechanical fingers, debris raining down around him while bullets and laser beams cut past only a few centimeters overhead. There was no way they could return fire.

_Miranda._ He highlighted the two trucks with Heavies on their tactical network.

_On it._

A streak of raging blue ripped across the hangar toward the truck on the left. The Heavy's laser fire tracked up in a vain attempt to hit her, but Miranda smashed into him and sent the entire truck slewing wildly with the force of the biotic charge. The towering Replica recoiled, stumbling back into the truck, and Miranda's high-frequency blade cleaved the clone in two from the shoulder to the waist, its armor glowing white where the weapon struck. These Replica had clearly _not_ been kitted for fighting a biotic armed with HF blades.

Her lightning-fast strike had the desired effect. Aside from silencing that cannon, a dozen Replica spun toward the obvious threat and opened fire. Laser beams and mass accelerators tore into the vehicle's skin, melting and punching holes through the cargo bay.

But Cayde-6 could see that Miranda hadn't stopped moving when she'd killed the Heavy, cutting through the opposite side of the cargo truck and scrambling along the outside of the vehicle. She flipped up onto the roof and launched herself at the next truck, and in mid-leap she turned into another streak of blue-shifted light. She impacted the second vehicle's backside while the first spun out of control, belching smoke and falling out of sight beyond the lip of the garage's landing pad. Before the Replica could reacquire her, she'd cut a hole in the cargo compartment and dove inside, blade and pistol flashing.

With more than half of the Replica turning their attention toward her, Miranda gave the rest of the crew a moment to breathe.

In that moment, Spencer was _gone_, darting away in a blur of psionic bullshit, while Cayde and Qui'in immediately emerged and opened fire on the closest Replica, not thirty meters away. They both had kinetic weapons, which meant the order of the moment was concentration of fire to defeat barriers. The Last Word and Qui'in's submachinegun ripped into the Replica's shields and the armor underneath an instant later, dropping the clone in a spray of blood.

Out the corner of his ocular sensors, Cayde-6 spotted Spencer - or rather, the burst of blinding-fast motion that was Spencer. He closed on a Replica advancing behind an omnishield, leaping up into a two-footed flying stomp against the barrier. His faux-designer shoes - the kind bodyguards wore to look nice but still be able to run, leap, and kick in teeth with - slammed into the shield, and he pushed, leaping off and throwing the Replica backwards. It let out a growl of surprise, stumbling a step away from Spencer and trying to bring the shield into place again.

In that time, the psychic had already touched down and darted forward, stomping down on the Replica's extended right leg and shattering its kneecap. Before it could register that blow, Spencer was circling around behind it, and a blur of twisting hands broke the Replica's gun arm at the elbow. Another step to the side and a flashing kick broke the shield arm's wrist. To Cayde-6 it was a blur of rapid-fire crunches, like meaty gunfire.

The clone toppled to the floor with a crash of armor plating and a cry of very human agony.

Cayde-6 ducked into cover as the Replica sprayed his position with gunfire, riddling the aircar with laser beams and kinetic rounds. A few of the latter skipped off his shields as he skittered sideways under the cover of the vehicle. A few meters to his left Qui'in did the same in the opposite direction. He heard another cry of pain and several angry or surprised shouts from the Replica, no doubt thanks to Spencer's bare-handed violence.

Qui'in rose from cover and opened fire again, bursts of rounds hammering another Replica as it moved out of cover, and Cayde snapped up the Last Word and blasted several shots to join him. It was hardwired into them both through their common history as turians: concentrate fire on shielded enemies to overwhelm their barriers, as fundamental a tenet of military training as slicing up a room during entry or field-stripping and reassembling a weapon. The Replica made it barely a couple of steps before its barriers collapsed and the revolver's bullets punched through the clone's throat and faceplate.

The Exo dropped back into cover as retaliatory fire hammered the car, and he popped open the heat sinks on his revolver to cool the weapon. As the sinks hissed and vented, Cayde-6 caught a bit of motion to his right, and spun just as a pair of Replica circled around an expensive black and silver aircar. One carried an omnishield, while the other sheltered behind it, aiming a rifle just over the top of the glowing orange barrier, and the latter immediately started shooting.

Most of the Replica were still advancing from the garage entrance, putting them on Cayde-6's left, and giving them a fine shot at him if he took cover from the flankers. But with the Replica closing in and bursts of kinetic rounds skipping off his barriers, he didn't have many options.

Sunlight formed and twisted in his left hand.

* * *

A clone's helmet exploded in a spray of molten fragments and seared flesh and bone, but Mesa had no time to appreciate the fact, ducking back into a doorway as return fire raged down the hallway.

The Replica in the corridor pressed on, ignoring their most recent casualty, stepping over the body and laying down a constant stream of bullets and beams. Mesa had dropped five of them as she slowly retreated back toward the garage. She would have taken more of them if she had room to maneuver (and preferably someone to draw their attention) but the hallway favored the side with numbers, firepower, and a willingness to absorb casualties.

She poked her head out, spotted a Replica behind an omnishield covering its companions, and snapped her laser pistol up to shoot it as it took a step forward. The beam hit it in the left boot as it was exposed for an instant, and the shield-bearer stumbled sideways just enough. Her next shot charred the Replica's throat, and it toppled, gasping.

That all happened in an eyeblink, and the remaining Replica in the hallway poured more fire into the doorway to push the quarian back. Mesa shook her head and withdrew, retreating back toward the garage.

_Boss, too many, _she sent. _About to have a whole squad climbing up your ass._

_We'll deal,_ Cayde-6 replied, the words tinged with an oddly cold calm.

She heard a deep detonation, accompanied by a sound akin to burning metal, sharp but heavy, and as she ducked into the garage she caught sight of a Replica trooper abruptly pierced by a beam of reddish-gold light and launched backwards. Red-gold fire washed over the clone and incinerated the corpse into a near-invisibly fine ash before it hit the ground.

For an instant, she thought she saw Cayde-6 wreathed in some kind of glowing, golden omnishield or fortification effect, but when she blinked the light was gone, leaving the battered old Exo in his bullet-riddled cloak and hood.

She opened her mouth to say something, but a burst of fire and screaming, twisted metal sounded from the garage entrance, and one of the air trucks slewed sideways. The truck crashed on top of someone's extra-luxuriant aircar, crushing it with a squeal of wrenched metal and shattered armorglass. Miranda leapt clear, rocketing across the garage on a trail of blue biotics and crashing into another Replica, before whirling to bisect another one.

Closer in, Qui'in sprayed bullets at another enemy soldier, rounds bouncing off its shields. An instant later, Spencer blurred past behind the clone, kicking out one of its legs with a sickening pop. As it fell, he grabbed its rifle, shoved it into the clone's forearm, and fired a burst, before ripping the weapon from its remaining hand and hurling it away, and finally snapped the Replica's arm at the elbow. It fell screaming in pain, but still alive.

A clone suddenly vaulted over the top of Cayde-6's car, but both he and Mesa snapped up their respective weapons and blasted it before its feet touched the floor, sending it toppling sideways. Mesa looked past him and immediately dove for cover behind the car, right as the remaining Replica Heavy swept its laser cannon over their position, a line of rapid-fire scarlet beams slicing through vehicles and leaving trails of scorched, boiled metal.

_Stay down, Cayde,_ Bakara abruptly sent.

And over the high-pitched howl of the laser cannon and ongoing din of battle, the rumble of spacecraft engines reached their ears.

* * *

_Ain't that the sweetest sound?_

No one replied to Cayde-6's message. They were too busy taking cover.

A bolt of green fire struck the remaining truck and washed it in a verdant ball of destruction, sending tumbling, molten hunks of vehicle flying across the garage and inflicting terrifying levels of insurance claims upon the parked aircars.

As the light from the destroyed vehicle faded, the _Paxterae_ rose into view, blotting out the Illium skyline.

Turian ships followed a broadly similar design: lean, long, and avian, with narrow blade-like shapes. Being an old _Hastati-_class frigate, the _Paxterae_ was no different. The tapering sword-shape of the main body was painted dark blue with red slashes along the flanks. A quartet of sharp-edged wings betrayed its older engineering, as the newer classes of turian warships only needed two wings to mount much more efficient sets of maneuvering and propulsion thrusters. The barrel of the frigate's forward mass accelerator loomed in the center of the bow, and the small, spiky protrusions of GARDIAN systems poked out of the ship's ventral and dorsal sides.

The main bay was open on the underside of the ship, the ramp lowered, and a white-armored krogan female towered in the opening, calmly reloading a blaster launcher. Beside her stood a lean, pink-and-yellow geth platform hefting a plasma assault cannon.

"Everyone should stay in cover!" Ellie transmitted over their comms, her words as dissonantly cheerful as ever. "A significant amount of brutal murder is about to occur!"

And the plasma cannon roared to life, making the distinct hissing _thoosh-thoosh_ of its kin, each bolt's low roar stringing together to make a continuous growl of superheated violence. The weapon was made to kill armored vehicles whose kinetic barriers had been depleted, which meant it tore through parked aircars and the Replica with white-hot hunger. Ellie started on the right side of the garage, relative to Cayde's position, and swept it across to incinerate clone flesh and alternately detonate or melt aircars.

Normally firing a vehicle-mounted plasma cannon into a building full of one's allies was a rather non-recommended course of action. Ellie, however, was not only a geth, with all the mechanical precision of that entailed, but she was linked into the _Pax's_ highly sophisticated and alarmingly illegal sensor systems and tactical suite. She traced her targets with literally inhuman precision, every bolt calculated right down to anticipated temperature changes caused by expanding air.

Beside Ellie, Bakara brought the blaster launcher to her shoulder and fired it into the opposite side of the hangar, blowing apart a group of Replica seeking cover. The garage was swiftly filling with flying hunks of molten metal and searing clouds of expanding plasma. However, thanks to their link to the _Paxterae's_ targeting systems, none of the violence came anywhere near Cayde-6's crew.

_Advance through the garage to your right,_ Bakara sent. _Ellie has left a... relatively safe corridor on that side for your escape._

_Alright, kids, I advise we skedaddle while Ellie and Bakara set half of Illium on fire,_ Cayde messaged the rest of the team. The only one who wasn't nearby was Miranda, who'd been busy cutting apart some Replica on the opposite side of the room.

_Miranda?_

_Already there,_ she sent, and he caught a sight of her launching herself toward the frigate's open hangar. She shot past the geth and krogan still shooting into the parking garage and landed explosively a safe distance behind them.

Cayde, Qui'in, and Mesa moved fast and low, skirting around the destruction that Ellie and Bakara left as they suppressed the hell out of the remaining clones. More of the faceless armored Replica were emerging from the corridors leading into the garage, but Ellie's cannon forced them find cover, burn where they stood, or both.

As they crouch-ran through the relatively undamaged corridor Ellie left them, a pair of Replica suddenly emerged from behind another vehicle, firing as they rose into view. Cayde would have been impressed at their determination if he thought they had free will. As it stood, he started to raise his revolver to gun them down, but Mesa put two laser beams through the helmet of the closest one, and the second abruptly spun around, a suspiciously Spencer-like blur dislocating the clone's arm and hurling the Replica half a dozen meters away.

"Cayde, you should hurry!" Ellie transmitted cheerfully. "I have successfully distracted them with horrible, burning death!"

_And I so appreciate it,_ he replied.

The _Paxterae _was moving in closer, the frigate rotating to bring its side airlock - located behind the bow pilot station - to face the garage. This took the lower cargo bay below the plane of the garage floor, and Ellie's plasma fire cut off.

The Replica that were still alive immediately began shooting again as the crew ran for the airlock. Specifically, they _began_ shooting, as Mesa calmly spun on her heels and immediately began cutting down the first few optimistic clones that started firing, while backing toward the ship. The laser pistols in the neo-quarian's hands glowed, hellish embers in the smoke and chaos.

_Spencer, Qui'in!_ Cayde ordered, and before Lorik managed more than a single syllable of confusion, Spencer ran past, slung the turian over his shoulder in a fireman's carry, and bolted toward the airlock. The _Paxterae_ maneuvered to within a few meters, angling its bow to get the opening as close to the garage as possible without clipping its wings on the side of the building.

Cayde-6 whirled and joined Mesa in laying shots down at the clones moving through the molten remains of dozens of vehicles and charred bodies. The Replica pressed on with their dogged, single-minded determination, but between the fires and confusion and debris, only a few could get good angles to shoot at Cayde's crew.

"On board!" Qui'in transmitted, and Cayde and Mesa fell back toward the airlock. Shots whipped or burned past them, bouncing or flashing off the hull of the frigate. A sudden impact and a warning of compromised armor sent Cayde stumbling sideways, but he recovered immediately, ignoring the damage reports. Laser beam most likely, mid-back, leaving another hole in his nicest cloak. _Damn it_.

He leapt out into the airlock, burnt cloak billowing out behind him and enemy fire slamming into the hull, a couple of shots hitting inside the airlock and skipping off his shields, until the doors slid closed and sealed tight.

Quite literally the instant the seal was in place, the _Paxterae_ was ascending, Ellie firing the in-atmosphere thrusters just enough to get them into the air without risking hurting civilians. As the ship ascended, the geth pilot put on more thrust.

Cayde-6 accessed external cameras as decontamination cycled. Looking back down at the building, he could see an army of flashing lights descending on the spire, while smoke rose from the multiple destroyed vehicles and billowed out of the garage that was likely already causing heart attacks among asari insurance collectives.

"I don't think we're going to be allowed to come back to Illium for a while," he muttered as they launched away from the planet.

* * *

"What does this job have to do with the Ethereals?" Shepard asks, back in the present day.

"You should ask your boss," Cayde-6 replies, leaning back in his chair. Smoke from someone's cigar wafts past. "Ethereals, EXALT, XCOM… Everyone had an interest in what they found, wherever it was that the quarians thought was _safe_."


	17. The Grimoire: Part Two

"Can you be less cryptic? We don't have all day," Shepard says.

"Son, who's telling this story?" Cayde-6 replies. "And you should see about getting metal. Then you'll have all the days you want. Anyway, we got moving after the Replica tried to wreck our insurance premiums..."

* * *

**_The Grimoire: Part Two_**

* * *

Decon was a necessary evil of interstellar travel. The lasers and biotic fields and cleaning agents that washed over everyone's skin and armor purged and sterilized Cayde-6 and his crew before they set foot inside the ship. Even if microorganisms couldn't infect across different species and biologies, there could be complications from simple exposure. Far too many interstellar travelers had dropped dead or had crippling allergic reactions to otherwise benign local life.

As soon as the decontamination light blinked and the airlock hissed open, Cayde-6 and his crew stepped inside the _Paxterae _proper.

"Ellie, how far out are we?" he asked as he moved into the crew corridor. It was a standard design feature of turian warships: pilot's stations in the bow, to the left of the docking airlock, a wide corridor to the right running aft, lined on either side with a dozen monitors and workstations for crew to operate the ship's myriad systems.

"Ascending very quickly," Ellie replied from the pilot's station. "It is unlikely that anyone will pursue and kill us before we escape the atmosphere and can accelerate to the Relay!"

She was a geth, so being both in the chair and toting a plasma-spewing implement of murder in the cargo hold wasn't exactly a paradox. The platform in the pilot's chair was one of the smaller geth designs, a vaguely humanoid shape consisting mostly of synthetic muscle and long, narrow fingers. Optical cables ran between the platform's fingers and the control console, and the glowing pink flashlight eye twitched over the displays.

"Always good to know," Cayde said, leaning over her and checking the navigation readings. They were leaving Illium's atmosphere as fast as they could without endangering anyone, which still put them well above legal speeds and thruster output. None of the local system patrol or defense ships were close enough to interdict them, although the nearest corvette squadron was shifting into an intercept profile. They were likely not aware of the gunfight down below yet, but Ellie wasn't following an assigned exit path from traffic control, and all manner of agitated hails were coming in from the orbital defense network.

Ultimately, it didn't matter. Illium's defenses were focused on escorting trade craft and intercepting sudden raids on orbital ships, not on intercepting craft leaving the surface. The _Paxterae _continued accelerating, and the moment they had exited near-planetary orbit and had a clear window through orbital traffic, Ellie triggered the mass effect envelope, inducing a wave of vertigo among the organic crew, and sent the ship screaming across the system at faster-than-light speeds. She didn't bother with an evasive pattern, instead shooting directly for the mass relay. No one was able to catch up before she decelerated, dropped the envelope, and transmitted their destination to the relay.

A flash of blue lightning, a burst of altered gravity, and the_ Paxterae_ was hurled halfway across the galaxy.

* * *

"Oh, good, we're not dead," Miranda transmitted from the cargo bay.

"Another flawless escape!" Cayde-6 replied as he walked out of the cockpit and down the crew corridor toward the CIC. He passed the glowing lights of the empty crew stations, data flicking across them as Ellie did the work of a dozen people.

On a fully-crewed military ship, those stations would have been monitored during a combat situation by organic crew, as the Citadel species still had not quite accepted the human practice of widespread infomorph use. On the _Paxterae_, they were lit with cold white holographic displays, but the chairs were empty. Ellie was linked in across the ship and handling most of the core functions, and even when he hadn't had a geth controlling his ship, Cayde never had the full crew a frigate would warrant. At best, he'd had a civilian ship's meager compliment.

That and, in his line of work, a lot of his crew tended to move on before the bullets caught up with them.

"Ellie, transmitting destination," he said, sending her the stellar coordinates that Qui'in had given them. "ETA?"

"Hmm," she said, her tone curious. "Evasive maneuvers to avoid pursuit, transit time between Relays, redlining our drives to tolerance levels-"

"Don't push us, maintenance costs are already burning holes in my hull," Cayde-6 interrupted.

"-traveling at normal, boring speeds, estimate twenty hours."

"Plenty of time to prepare," he said as he stepped into the CIC.

The room was lorded over by a huge central hologram displaying both a wireframe model of the ship and a dizzyingly-complex spiderweb of active mass relays, the route Ellie was plotting highlighted in orange lines cutting across the galaxy. A double row of workstations for the non-existent crew who would have been handling sensor data and tactical information stood ready, consoles lit and waiting. Lorik Qui'in stood in the middle of the room, on the command platform overlooking the hologlobe, while Mesa lounged in a workstation, idly spinning in place in the chair while twirling a sidearm over her head. Cayde-6 would have been concerned if it were anyone else handling a gun that nonchalantly.

"You got shot in the back," Qui'in immediately stated as the Exo entered the room.

"You're in my spot," Cayde replied as he crossed the room. "My dramatic captaining platform."

Qui'in cocked his head to the side, and Cayde-6 stepped up beside him, gently pushing the Broker liaison aside. Sensors mounted in the platform detected his presence, and the air filters started to blow. The Exo struck a domineering pose, head thrown back and hands on his hips, and the cloak flared out and billowed dramatically. All he was missing was a keg of ale to put his foot on.

Lorik Qui'in stared at him for a moment, mandibles spread apart in the rough turian equivalent of "Are you shitting me." Minus the question mark, of course.

"Yeah, he does that," Mesa said, her tone bored, and she began juggling loaded pistols.

"I reiterate, Cayde," Qui'in said after a moment, shaking his head. "You were shot. I can smell the molten plating."

"Yeah, that happens," the Exo replied, turning back toward his client and shrugging. "You get used to it after a while. Should try switching to metal, Lorik. Saves trips to the bathroom. Mesa can shoot you if you want, make it clean and painless."

"Politely, of course," she said. "Free of charge."

"Not yet," Lorik said with a sigh. "I assume you're going to begin planning the operation based on the data I sent you?"

"Rest and repair first," Cayde said, hopping down from the command platform. "I got shot, remember? Takes priority."

* * *

The captain's cabin on a turian warship was a small affair, little more than a standard bunk with enough space allocated to include an office desk. Cayde-6 didn't run his ship military, however, and he'd shed enough precious bodily fluids and components that he had no qualms with upgrading. The _Pax_ didn't have much of a crew, and he'd had some non-structurally-significant bulkheads removed and extended his cabin into part of the crew quarters. It gave him enough room to stretch out his legs, string up a hammock, dance a little jig, or - most relevant to his current needs - install a small bionics workshop for repairing his Exo body.

Sentimentality was something most of his species could be accused of, but in turians it tended toward military gear, be it medals, keepsakes of fallen comrades, or pieces of damaged weapons or armor. In his case, Cayde-6 kept pieces of himself.

The Exo had lived a long time. The armorglass case that suspended chunks of twisted, scorched metal, frayed optical wiring, and molten limbs spanned an entire wall, cluttered with the blackened and mangled pieces of old body parts that he had replaced over the years. The shape and sophistication of the components started at the oldest and crudest to the aft, near the cabin's hatch, and progressed in advancement toward the bow. It was a timeline of transturian technology, from broken exosuit rigs that had wrapped around grievously-wounded bodies to the modern day, purely mechanical frames bearing the vestigial designation given to the old models.

The glass panel slid up at the bow end of the case, and Cayde-6 reached in, placing the scorched hunk of armor plate onto a waiting automated rack alongside the other parts of himself that had been memorably molten and mangled over his extended lifetime. The rest of the pieces slid aftwards, incrementally tightening their spacing to accommodate their newest member.

He sealed the case again and turned back toward the workshop, the exposed section of his Exo body glowing in the dim light of his cabin. Gleaming artificial musculature and metallic endoskeleton composites were visible through the gap in the frame, and optical wiring sent a waterfall of flickering light down through his mechanical innards. He sat down on a stool by a cluttered workbench, underneath a quartet of multi-jointed maintenance arms festooned with tools. A quick transmitted command, and the arms lowered and began humming, mini-facturing plants and larger tools patching up the minor damage from thermal bleed-through. Small sparks arced through the air, and Cayde-6's body jerked a couple of times as the machinery forcefully reattached repaired fibers.

While the workshop did its job, the door to the cabin slid apart, and Urdnot Bakara stepped into the room without preamble. She crossed the room to stand over him, still clad in her white battle armor, and regarded him impassively, which on a krogan looked like she wanted to empty a shotgun into his face.

"Howdy," Cayde said, leaning back in his stool to look up at her. The arms shifted position, their VIs beeping in annoyance as he interfered with their work. "Good work back there on Illium. I appreciate the collateral damage when it covers our escape."

"You've put the entire crew at risk with this job," Bakara said. "In your typically idiotic manner."

Krogan. So delightfully blunt, Bakara especially so. Among their people, that made her even more persuasive than most.

"It's a Broker job, Bakara," he replied, dropping any semblance of sarcasm or levity. "You know we can't turn those down."

"Someone was willing to go to open warfare on the spires of Illium to take out Qui'in," she replied. Her gaze was withering and unblinking. "We've fought enemies with those resources before."

For most, that would be a boast. For Bakara, and the history of this ship, it was a warning. She and Cayde-6 had flown together for a long time, and there had been more than one point where they were the only ones still walking the corridors of the _Pax_.

For a moment, he wanted to argue. There was a vicious spike of anger and frustration, gifts of the brilliant engineers who made the cyberbrain in his chassis mimic the real thing to such exacting perfection. He beat it down, stomping it on the throat and wrangling the anger and pain back into its cage. With the right software he could have just shut that part of his off completely, but Cayde-6 didn't want to go that far. He didn't have an ounce of organic tissue anymore, but he was still a turian.

And Bakara had fought with him over this old, bitter ground too many times.

"You're right," he said after a few moments of consideration, admitting as much to himself as to her. "But that doesn't change facts. The only reason we still fly is because the Broker keeps us in the black."

"Is that worth trading the lives of this crew?" she asked.

"Yes." Cayde-6 leaned forward, the sparking arms jerking to keep up with him. His glowing eyes glanced sideways, to the display holding the pieces of himself he'd given over the centuries. Well, the physical pieces. "Because like it or not, the jobs the Broker sends us on are the ones need doing."

"Your crew aren't Replica," Bakara murmured, and he jerked at that, and looked away. "Many sapients cannot permanently die anymore," she continued, "But even the ones with cortical stacks come back changed. Death is not easy to erase, even among those who elect for immortality."

He mulled over that while the repair tools continued their delicate work. There was an unspoken but pointed accusation in there. Cayde couldn't die permanently. Neither could Ellie, she'd just restore her memories from archives. Miranda almost certainly had enough redundant backups to crew antire dreadnought. But the rest of the crew… Spencer could back up, but he'd lose his psychic abilities. Mesa had no backups as far as he was aware. Bakara, like most krogan, refused the very idea of cortical stacks.

Half the team would be dead permanently or crippled if he screwed this up.

"You think we're going on another suicide run?" Cayde-6 asked her after some time.

"I believe that the Broker considers you a reliable asset," the krogan doctor replied. "Surrounded by much more expendable ones."

Bakara didn't know the whole truth about him, and he doubted anyone short of the Broker did. But she knew enough to understand that Cayde-6 didn't fear death.

"You're right in that regard," he finally said. "Far as the Broker's concerned, you're all just ablative armor so I can do the job needs doing."

He shook his head, and the tools retracted, leaving a new plate fitted over the previous gap, shiny and polished. It wouldn't stay that way for long.

"But I'm damned if I think the same way," Cayde-6 said as he rose to his feet. "Time to gather the crew."

* * *

"First thing's first," the Exo captain said, his tone chipper and cavalier. He stood at the head of the table in the _Pax's_ comms room, wearing a different but no less swanky cloak in black and yellow. "You saw how much clone blood had to get spilled down on Illium. That looks to be the opposition we're fighting. Gentlemen willing to toss that kind of money and firepower around tend to be unpleasant to have words with, if you understand."

His crew were sitting around the simple, scrounged conference table bolted to the floor. On a proper warship this would be the secured briefing room, his sensors tingling with the feedback of electronic countermeasures. Cayde never turned them on, as there really wasn't anyone to hide the information from. The rectangular room had an overhead holographic projector and a mishmash of crash seats and crew chairs cannibalized from the ops stations.

Miranda sat calm and upright in the nicest chair in the room, having shed the scary cyber-ninja armor she preferred when it was cutting time. Without it, she looked like a disturbingly symmetrical human woman with black hair, dark blue eyes, and pale skin that was way too smooth. Cayde suspected heavy gene-modding, and Spencer had indicated to him - in his language of twisty mouth expressions, raised eyebrows, and indistinct grunts - that by human standards she was considered average across the board in terms of of proportions and beauty, which was _weird _for someone with that much work at the genetic level. One would expect that a human with that much modding would have the cosmetics to give them a killer version of... whatever humans liked instead of distinct averageness.

Mesa still wore her red and black spacer jacket and jumpsuit, feet up on the table. Despite the fact that her eyes were closed, she was disassembling and reassembling a pistol with bored, automatic flicks of her fingers. Spencer was next to her, sitting straight in his chair, military straight, hands folded, eyes flinty, and beard masculine. He'd hit the painkillers hard after jetting around that much back on the surface, but lacked any hint of dullness in his eyes or expression.

Ellie's main platform didn't fit into a chair, so her Juggernaut simply sat on the floor, and still towered over everyone else. A remote-linked Hopper clung to the wall opposite the big platform, for "perspective."

Bakara leaned over the table, hands folded, regarding Cayde-6 with the standard-issue krogan glare promising equal amounts of violence and interest. "About to beat you to death with your own legs" appeared to be their species' default poise.

Lorik Qui'in, special guest star of the whole briefing, was finishing some work on his omnitool, but they had some time before he completed whatever he was doing, so Cayde continued.

"The fact that someone threw those kinds of resources at killing us has me worried," he said. A slight increase in the intensity of Bakara's default murder-glare prompted an addendum. "Erm, me and Bakara, I would never leave out your input. Anyway, if someone wants us dead, we ought to figure out the who and the why, the latter of which I suspect Lorik's briefing will help us on."

"I'm still uncertain how much detail we should go over," Qui'in said. "That meeting on Illium was for you and me only."

"When the Replica started shooting at us, it became my whole crew's concern," Cayde replied, and nods of assent went around the table. Qui'in nodded, and said no more.

"As for the who, I've got some ideas," Cayde continued. "Been going over the-"

"It was the New Conglomerate," Miranda cut in.

Everyone stared at her for a moment, and Cayde's mandibles shut with a metallic click.

"Or Miranda can just deflate me completely," he sighed. "How do you figure that?"

"Close-quarters assault with overwhelming force," she said, shrugging. "Use of large numbers of disposable assets to overwhelm the target in short-range combat. Total disregard for potential civilian losses but refraining from inflicting notable damage on commercial material assets. Airmobile assault tactics, heavy close-assault specialist weaponry. Plus those portable shields are pretty much an NC hallmark, and the NC is on of the biggest buyers of ATC's Replicas. That whole attack was a textbook New Conglomerate assassination. It would have worked if it was, well, anyone besides _us _they were trying to kill."

"Well, that's a relief," Mesa muttered. "At least we know which faceless galactic superpower wants us dead."

Spencer grunted, shaking his head, and Cayde nodded.

"I agree, we don't know what exactly they were after," he said. "Lorik, does the NC have any particular issues with you, or our mutual employer?"

"None that I am aware of," Qui'in said, his words distracted. "Or at least none that stand out. Considering that the New Conglomerate is made up of a many differing interests and corps, any one of them could have paid Security Command to dispatch a couple of platoons of undercover Replica assassins."

"We'd know more," Miranda said, "if we had access to the Replica's genome patterns and autopsies. That could tell us which lot and product line they were produced from."

Ellie's face panels shifted slightly, and she held up a three-fingered hand.

"Standby a moment," she chirped, both Juggernaut and Hopper platforms speaking in unison. "Accessing Illium police records... Bypassing security. Hm. They're still running gene tests on the corpses left behind, but their autopsy reports are in! Downloading!"

"Well, it's not like we aren't wanted there for a whole lot worse crimes," Cayde muttered at her casual breach of law enforcement information security. "Forward it to, well, whoever wants to look at it when you're done."

"Don't worry, boss!" Ellie said with cheer. "I may need to hijack more bandwidth, but I'll get it done!"

"How did you break into Illium police records that quickly?" Bakara asked, and Ellie shrugged with a clatter of moving mechanical plating.

"Because there's already geth in their networks," she said, as if it were the most obvious thing in the universe.

"What networks have they breached?" Miranda asked, raising an eyebrow.

"All of them," Ellie replied.

Everyone stared at her for a moment, and the glowing yellow flashlight eyes bored into them with their piercing mechanical gaze.

"Well, that ain't the creepiest thing I've heard by a long shot," Cayde-6 said with a shrug. It was a common conspiracy theory that the geth had access to most computer networks around the galaxy, but Cayde suspected that the geth had been breaking into organic networks long before they'd encountered humanity and opened up to the realm of mostly-meaty folk.

"Ready to begin," Qui'in said, and the room darkened a moment later, cutting off any further commentary on Ellie's statement. The projector hummed and lit up the middle of the room, showing a galaxy map that highlighted the target sector.

"As I explained to Cayde-6 before, in more... discreet circumstances," Qui'in started, "this mission is a recovery and rescue operation. The objective is the science ship _Ameliasan_, chartered by Thessia University, carrying a strategic archaeological expedition led by Doctor Liara T'Soni."

He ran down the same details of the job that he'd discussed with Cayde on were searching for Prothean ruins, while Broker assets covertly attached to the expedition were looking into the fabled quarian safe haven of _Oronvik_. Communications were abruptly lost, then reestablished on the other side of the galaxy in the Kyza system in the Shrike Abyssal. Comms included a mission complete code. Beyond that, they had no idea what they were walking into.

"Oh, I know where this one is going," Mesa muttered. "Derelicts are never fun to recover."

"Depends on what scrambled the ship and killed the crew," Cayde replied, scratching one of his mandibles and looking over the ship schematic. "I don't know of anything that could send a ship flying to the other side of the galaxy, unless they found an inactive relay."

"Or something like a wormhole array," Miranda mused. "Could they have found Ethereal tech? Wormhole arrays are pretty much just derivatives of elerium-based wormhole tech combined with mass relays."

"Wait a moment," Ellie said. "Why are you assuming the crew are dead?"

Cayde blinked slowly, which was especially pronounced, considering he didn't exactly need to.

"Ellie, in this scenario, the crew is _always_ dead."

"Yep," Mesa added with a knowing nod. "Usually there's _something_ hiding in the vents too."

"Or an insane VI/AI hybrid or infomorph," Miranda said.

"Rampant biological or chemical weaponry are also a possibility," Bakara suggested. "Or a weaponized nanotech swarm."

Spencer grunted ominously. Cayde was glad he was an Exo, otherwise he would have shivered at the psychic's implications.

"Or maybe just some slasher got loose among the crew and starting cuttin' folks," Cayde-6 finished up. "Chances are good something nasty is skittering about on that boat." He looked back to Lorik. "Any ideas?"

"If I had any beyond speculation, they would be included in the briefing," the other turian replied. "The reason your team was tapped was because of its exceptional skill at adaptation and improvisation in the face of unexpected threats, with a variety of tactical and strategic options applied in unexpected circumstances, overwhelming opposition, and conventionally non-viable scenarios."

"Yeah, we blow them up real good," Mesa translated, but the levity was forced, and she stared at the derelict's schematic intently.

Spencer grunted again, and Cayde snapped his head toward the human. The psychic was poring over a datapad, eyes flicking back and forth and making minute gestures with his fingers, a telltale sign that he was parsing a lot of data over his AR interface. Spencer finally frowned and sat back, shaking his head.

"XCOM," Cayde translated, and Qui'in glanced between them, wondering how the Exo had gotten that out of the noncommittal noises Spencer had made.

The human made a vague gesture at the hologram schematic, and brought up a personnel list. Names scrolled past, detailing science, security, and technical staff, along with ship crew.

"XCOM Intelligence was running the show over there," Cayde said, and nodded. "Okay, that makes sense. This was supposed to be a Broker-backed operation, though."

Spencer frowned, shrugging again, and made a vague gesture toward the schematic and crew.

"The Broker did provide some of the funding and support for the expedition, yes," Qui'in said. "But not all of it."

Spencer nodded at that, and jerked his head toward the personnel list.

"Ah, yes, that makes sense," Miranda said. "The Broker backed the expedition _because _they knew XCOM and the Council were involved, and that they had found something important enough to commit an R&amp;D team to the mission."

Spencer nodded quickly, and pointed at the crew roster again.

"But why would they have Intelligence agents and a PsiCorps rep on the ship too?" Miranda continued.

"How did you...?" Qui'in asked, but Spencer shrugged.

"He's former PsiCorps," Miranda said. "Familiar with XCOM the same way I am with the New Conglomerate, Ellie with the geth, and Cayde with chronic failure."

"When I fail, I do so with frabjous fashion sense," the Exo replied with grave seriousness.

"That's not what... never mind," Qui'in said with a shake of the head.

"The simplest explanation," Bakara cut in, "is that something of great value was either discovered or expected to be discovered. Given that the vessel was sent across the galaxy with no record of its passage, we can assume that they encountered something unusual. In the current context, that means quarian, Prothean, or Ethereal technology, or perhaps something predating them but still functional."

"Can't imagine tech still functioning more than a few thousand years without maintenance," Cayde said. "Well, 'cept for mass relays, but they maintain themselves and have that funny quantum-locking going on."

"Isn't quarian," Mesa said, her tone quiet. "They didn't have anything comparable to Prothean or Ethereal engineering when they were wiped out."

Spencer exhaled.

"Right, we won't know 'till we board that derelict," Cayde said with a nod. "Does anyone have anything useful to comment on?"

Several seconds of silence passed, and he looked over his crew. Most of them bore the same impassive expressions from before, save...

"Mesa?" he spoke. She was peering at the schematic with her glowing eyes, one hand idly tapping the reassembled butt of her pistol, her features tight and drawn. Her eyes flicked back toward him, and she exhaled, brushing strands of dark hair back behind her ears.

"Boss," the neo-quarian said, her tone quiet. "No derelict I've ever gone into had sunshine and rainbows waiting for me inside. I say we go in heavy and expect trouble. I've got bad vibes from this."

He watched her face for a few moments, and leaned forward.

"What do you know?" he asked. Everyone had turned their gaze toward her, but she might as well have been blind for all the reaction she gave to that attention.

"No more than you do," she replied, her tone distant. "But I've... been on ships like this before. It sticks with you when you've seen shit like that."

Not for the first time, Cayde wondered what the hell she had gone through before he'd hired her on Omega.

"Okay, anything else?" he asked, looking around the room and shaking off those lingering questions. Something to ask in private. The others shook their heads. "Right. Take the data, run over it while we're on the way. Memorize the layout, and get some rest... if, you know, that's something you're into."

The crew nodded and rose, filing out after downloading the mission data.

They didn't need to say anything else now. Whatever levity they were showing now, they all understood what they were up against.

* * *

Half an hour after the briefing, Spencer was wolfing down a high-calorie meal in the ship's mess, adjacent to the crew bunks. There was room for only a couple of tables, as even older-model frigates never had more than a couple dozen crewmen and shifts meant that only a small part of the ship's complement would eating at a time. Of the former tables, only one remained, albeit pockmarked with bullet holes. The other had been scrapped after an incident long ago involving Bakara and the furniture-driven deaths of several pirates. Cayde-6 had apparently ripped the old, dim, turian-standard lighting in a random fit of home improvement and put in brighter lamps.

The food was the cheap, automated protein-vegetable crap that the equally-cheap food processor spat out, but Spencer ate it with the enthusiasm of a starving man. In some ways, he was. His psionics burned so many calories that he had a krogan's appetite, which was also way beyond what a human psychic of comparable powers typically pulled. Between Bakara and himself, they covered roughly seventy percent of the ship's food budget - an impressive feat, considering two-thirds of the crew were synthetic.

Mesa leaned against a wall by the doorway to the crew cabin, watching him while idly using her AR to adjust the settings on a new pistol she'd snatched from a dead Replica back on Illium. Manufacturer standards were tolerable, but like so many complex pieces of machinery, the key to perfection was in tweaking to fit her preferences. A slight adjustment to the oscillation rate of a mass effect field could spell the difference between a shot would merely hit a foe in the head at a hundred meters and one that went through the seam of his visor.

"Head still hurting?" she asked as he ate. He nodded while chewing through the protein paste. "How bad? Doc gave you painkillers, right?"

Spencer grunted and gestured to the side of his head with his off hand, a quick spin of his fingers.

"Yeah, too bad there's no cure for psi-high." She sighed and crossed the small mess, sitting down across from him and pushing back her long black hair. "You pushed yourself way too hard down there, Spence. Was there a point where you weren't blurring?"

He stopped chewing and met her glowing eyes with his own hard gaze.

"I know," she said with a short nod. "You have to use it to stay ahead of our enemies. But..." Human and neo-quarian body language was relatively similar, even without human-centric socialization, so she didn't have much trouble showing concern from her posture.

He raised an eyebrow slightly, and she nodded.

"Yes, I'm worried about you. I _can _care about something other than a gun."

He waved another hand between them, fingers moving quickly, and exhaled in a sound that vaguely resembled a bullet.

"Spence, you're not able to sustain this," she said, ignoring his attempt at humor. "Tapping that much power. You're fast but... even krogan know that they can't headbutt _everything_. And you're a lot more fragile than they are. You can't just rely on your psionics and those - admittedly - amazing fists of yours."

He leaned forward just bit, jaw tightening. She took a calculated risk, reaching forward with a hand, putting it on top of his. Her thick digits dwarfed his, even with the size difference between species and genders, and she could see the heavy bruising across his fingers and knuckles. He tensed, but didn't pull away. Instead he exhaled, and his gaze got harder, and she understood that expression. He always sported it when anyone treaded this ground.

"Fine, let's be honest here," she said. "Violence is our job. I know you've got this rule going on about how you approach things and that you don't use lethal force. And if you were a superhero that would be fine, but come on. We're not magic space wizards, Spence. I shoot guns. You go really fast. Miranda chops things. Bakara keeps us alive. Ellie makes sure we don't crash. And Cayde gets us in deep shit."

The corner of his mouth twitched in amusement, but the rest of him remained etched in granite.

"We're mercenaries. We do violence because it's what we're best at. But you... you handicap yourself." She looked down at his battered hands, one of her fingers brushing across the rough skin. "It's going to get you killed."

With her other hand, Mesa reached inside her jacket and pulled a compact, collapsed kinetic pistol. She set it on the table between them, and his eyes locked on it for several long seconds.

"I know you don't like guns," she said, "but that doesn't mean you can't use them."

Spencer nodded, but didn't pick up the weapon like she'd hoped. Instead, he reached down, touching the pistol's handle, and gently pushed it back toward her. With his finger, he drew a line across the table under the pistol.

She shook her head as she took the weapon back and slid it into her jacket. The message was clear: some lines he didn't cross.

"One day, we're going to be in trouble," she said, and her expression hardened. "People will die because you hold yourself back."

He said nothing, just matching her gaze and slowly chewing his crappy veggie-proteins. Finally he nodded, with no shift in those stony features. Spencer was at peace with that outcome.

"You are such an ass," Mesa muttered, scowling. "Don't act like a paragon. We all have blood on our hands."

He swallowed and exhaled, and for a moment, she saw exhaustion in his eyes - but only for a heartbeat. That rock-hard stubbornness returned to his features, and he nodded once more.

She didn't know his background, but she had suspicions. He was tight-lipped about his past, which was saying something considering Spencer was mute. The mysterious, atoning badass killer vibe was sexy as hell, and he could do some amazing things with that speed of his, but that didn't hide the hypocrisy. Blood ran down the walls on the _Paxterae _from the river of bodies they'd _all_ left in their wakes. Even Ellie admitted that most of her geth had been directly uploaded onto combat platforms that had seen violence.

"Can you do it, if you have to?" she asked, glaring into his eyes.

He said nothing, instead simply locking into place with that adamant, unyielding gaze, meeting her eyes and challenging her.

She yielded first. The conversation was going nowhere, and was getting even more one-sided than usual. Mesa sighed in annoyance and frustration, pulled her hand away from his, and stood.

"Sleep in your own bunk tonight," she muttered as she stalked away from the table, leaving Spencer to his silent meal.

* * *

The _Pax's _bay vehicle bay hadn't been used for that purpose in a long time. The cavernous deck was located on the "bottom" of the frigate, and was intended to house assault shuttles or light vehicles for a non-existent compliment of infantry. Right now, it played home to a lightweight all-terrain rover of turian engineering that had likely seen better centuries. Much of the remaining space was taken up by, as Cayde-6 put it, "these piles of crap that you guys collect."

Spencer had cleared off and defined an area to one side of the bay, marked off a circular boundary, laid down a circular mat, and grunted emphatically, signifying that it was a sparring ring. An open spot a bit further down had been cordoned off with old scrapyard hull plating, with targets made out of the same propped up on the far end to form a firing range. That had been Mesa's idea, though she complained that it was too short-range for her to properly hone her skills on. Cayde had suggested she get into a hardsuit and he would dump junk to drift out behind the ship for target practice.

Ellie, meanwhile, had a _literal _pile of junk. A corner of the bay close to the Engineering elevator contained neat piles of carefully cleaned and maintained scrap metal and old parts that she'd found on various planets, tended by a hopper platform like some sort of garden of machinery. There was no rhyme or reason to the junk pile, as far as anyone could tell; aircraft and spaceship components were collected alongside plating from agricultural drones and home appliances and scrap circuitry. There was even what looked like an elerium battery buried in the piles.

On the wall opposite their cheap, junky rover, Cayde-6 had built a 1/20th scale model of the _Paxterae_. It was made of metal and ceramics and plastic, and the detailing was precise. A casual scan showed the scale model had actual functional engines, taken from a light hoverbike, and had its own electrical wiring running through it. It even had a miniaturized mass effect core pulled from a junked gun drone. No one was precisely sure when he'd actually finished the project; it had been there even when Bakara had joined the crew. Cayde-6 would come down periodically to check his scale model, and if something about the ship had changed, the Exo altered it on the model too when he had spare time.

Bakara didn't keep any pet projects down here. She confined her work and social life to her lab on the crew deck. "I don't want to get blood in the vehicle bay," as she put it.

Miranda had claimed a corner for herself, which Ellie had called her "stabby-shrine." In way, the geth was right; the small-arms minifabrication and maintenance bench did kind of resemble an altar. The clean white cloth she had set the bench upon and the several high-frequency blades she stored in weapon racks around the workstation added to the reverential air. The cherry on top, of course, was Miranda's maintenance "ritual."

It hadn't started as a _ritual_; Miranda had simply found that sitting in a cross-legged position in front of the maintenance bench was most effective for her to direct the scanning and repair process that every high-frequency blade required. The rest of the elements of the "ritual" had crept in over time. Slowly laying the sword down on the bench and locking in the maintenance sheath had turned into a careful, almost reverential process. She'd found that closing her eyes so that she could direct-access the bench's systems more effectively would resemble meditation to an outside observer.

The careful, near-reverential treatment of the blade was a necessity. High-frequency weapons had atrocious failure rates, and were the "hangar queens" of small arms. The pulses running through the length of the weapon let it utterly rend through most materials, but even a slight crack in the blade itself meant that those same pulses could shatter the weapon. Anytime Miranda used one of her swords, she had to run it through the maintenance bench to scan for imperfections in the metal and repair them.

The swords were her life. Miranda had little to her name, beyond her blades, her gun, her armor, and an extensive set of anonymous bank accounts scattered across the galaxy, filled with funds she'd siphoned off of her "father's" companies before making her escape. This weapon was particularly dear to her, as it had been the high-frequency blade she'd picked up when she'd informed her father of her intentions of making her own way in the galaxy.

Considering that Henry Lawson had never had any intention for his "daughters" beyond their role as test beds for genetic experiments and synthetic learning platforms, he'd taken to her notions of independence poorly. The sword she was repairing now had been the _first _she'd used to kill her father, cutting him into about two-dozen pieces. No matter how many times she'd had to slice or shoot the bodies Henry inhabited in the subsequent years, that first act of filial murder remained the most special to her.

As she repaired the blade's minor faults and fractures, she reflected on how much of her genetic structure had been in the Replica she'd killed today. The gene sequencing results from the Nos Astra police autopsies confirmed that the clones had been current-gen units, and she recognized much of the genetic coding that made the manufactured soldiers. She wasn't surprised to find that a significant part of her DNA sequences had made it into the current generation, along with a not-insignificant portion of nonhuman sequences as well. It was no secret that mankind had been playing with alien genetics since the Ethereal invasion; fury and olympian morphs and their derivatives used Muton and Thin Man sequences, menton morphs used Sectoid and Ethereal neural structures, and a lot of uplifts used bits of alien DNA to smooth over the process of applying humanlike intelligence and mobility to animal species. Miranda had found more than a fair share of Muton and Sectoid DNA in the sequences used to cook up this particular iteration of the Replica.

Father would never have approved of any of his children plumbing the depths of their own genetic development. But then, if he didn't like the idea of Miranda learning what made her and then altering it, he probably shouldn't have given her so much synthetic learning capacity. She probably could have gone to work at a number of genetics labs across the galaxy, if she didn't fear that Henry Lawson's thugs would eventually find her.

As the maintenance bench worked, and she knelt before it, directing the minifabricators to repair the faults in her sword, Miranda received a ping from someone on the ship, indicating they wanted to talk. She ignored it and continued working. After a few seconds the pinging stopped, and instead a message appeared in her personal inbox. She continued to ignore it until the most important repairs were done, taking nearly an hour of careful fabrication and application to keep the blade uniformly lethal. Finally, convinced that she could let the machine do the remaining work on its own, she checked her inbox.

The message's subject read: _Stabby Stabby Stabby Stabby Stabby SUPER IMPORTANT data for you! :D_

"Goddammit, Ellie," she breathed, shaking her head, and opened the message.

_I stole an updated autopsy report from the Nos Astra police! Organics really like learning how other organics died! And asari must really, really want to see how the Replica died, because we killed them in so many interesting ways! You should read the notes on the ones you chopped up!_

"Great," Miranda said, but went ahead and opened the files Ellie had attached. Genetic data was useful, but the bodies were also troves of data. She spent several minutes scanning over the autopsies, surprised at exactly how many corpses they'd left in their wake. Ellie had been right in that the sheer _variety_ of ways that the Replica had died was impressive. One of them had apparently been vaporized into ultra-fine ash; she had no idea whose weapon had donethat_. _A number had been noted to have broken or dislocated bones, and had subsequently died due to...

"Ocular nerve incendiaries," she murmured, curious, and made a mental note to not tell Spencer about that fact.

Another aspect that caught attention was the one consistent factor across the entire array of dead clones: that every single one of them had both their craniums and their hands destroyed by implanted incendiaries. Miranda frowned and pulled up recorded combat data from her mask's sensors. She carefully watched each replica that she had witnessed being disabled or killed, and saw no signs of incendiaries detonating when they went down. That meant that they'd likely been triggered after the battle had concluded. A quick check of the autopsy conclusions showed that the Nos Astra medical examiner agreed, believing that the implanted explosives were a remotely activated failsafe.

Miranda understood the heads; after all, the brains of the intact Replica could be studied for a lot of information, even if they had suffered neural degradation over minutes or hours after body-death. But why their hands? There had to be something distinctive in the Replicas' hands or digits that someone was unwilling to risk being discovered.

Sometime during her investigation, the maintenance bench had completed repairs on her high-frequency blade. Miranda shook herself out of her thoughts and drew the sword from the fabrication sheath and examined the spotless, reflective surface of the weapon. She saw her own, deliberately average features in the metal, and after a few seconds she picked up the metal scabbard that fit to her armor's back. The blade soundlessly slid into the sheath, clicking faintly as it reached the hilt. She set the weapon back up on the blade racks surrounding the bench, and resumed consideration of the Replica.

She'd never heard of data storage in the fingers, beyond haptic interface chips implanted into fingertips or palms. Could the Replica have been given special access to interfaces or omnitools with sensitive data? No, that didn't make much sense, knowing what she did about the Replica. These hadn't been specialist units that needed to act as spies or technicians for advanced weapons. They were disposable assassination units. Was there something more basic about the hands that made them important? Did the Replica have distinct hand structures that could have tied them to a particular genetic lot number or buyer?

Miranda nodded to herself. Yes, that seemed more likely. Developmental alterations could have resulted in distinctive hand and possibly cranial structures. Digits were often noticeably altered when nonhuman DNA strands were worked into human gene sequences, and it also happened when morphs were treated to different processes while undergoing growth treatment. If the Replicas' hands and heads were different enough from the norm, it serve as a clue as to where they were grown and who bought them.

Which meant that the next time they went up against these Replica, she would need to bring one in intact. Alive, or at least without the explosives that destroyed the evidence.

* * *

"So, according to Miranda, we need to pack nonlethal kit. That's always fun."

Cayde-6 stood on the bridge with his crew, who were gathered around the galaxy map projection, showing them half an hour from their destination. They'd all gotten the rest they needed, though Cayde noticed that Mesa and Spencer were standing a bit further apart than normal. Sleeping separately again, then. Yay for intercrew drama. Another advantage of being all metal, he reckoned: no uncontrollable biological mating issues to deal with.

The crew were loaded with space combat kit: full hardsuit armor and helmets clipped to their belts, save for Ellie, who was just laden with an entire combat engineering crew's worth of salvage and demolition gear on her back. He'd also made sure to give everyone arc-throwers, per Miranda's suggestion.

"Taking an enemy alive does not worry me," Bakara said, but she glared at Cayde, and he gave her a "you were right, shut up now" shrug. "I am more concerned about who is going to be sending them after us. If we learn who has bought these clone soldiers, it may push them to be more aggressive."

"Good," Mesa said with a grin, one hand tapping a pistol on her waist.

"They'll have been using a legion of cutouts for the hit on Illium," Miranda said. "New Conglomerate does a thorough job scrubbing their trail. I saw it often enough before I departed their service."

"Yeah, you never talk about that, Miranda," Cayde added. "Anything particular you feel like sharing on this whole situation? Beyond that we're up against the biggest megacorps in human space, I mean."

"I've told you what's relevant," she replied, her words stiff and cold. "The Replica were next-gen units, and the self-destruct charges indicate something very dangerous and distinctive. Armacham Technology wouldn't release next-gen units like this for anyone, and definitely not for any standard hit. This had to come down from the top. Either ATC or one of the other leaders of the New Conglomerate with enough pull to get ATC to release those units."

"I'll send a message to the Broker," Qui'in added, and Cayde glanced over to him, having halfway forgotten about his presence. "Hopefully we can get more evidence connecting them to this attack."

"I can hear the 'however' in your voice, y'know," Cayde interjected.

"I can't guarantee that the Broker will act on that information," Qui'in added after a couple of seconds. "What I know of the Broker tells me that he values stability over anything else. Large-scale megacorps are a favorite tool for enforcing stability. They can be predictably manipulated."

"Why am I not surprised," Cayde muttered, but he understood. Hell, he'd just argued with Bakara not a day earlier that the jobs the Broker sent them on were the necessary evils to keep the galaxy functional. He glanced to Ellie, and saw that the geth's Juggernaut platform loomed nearby, like a helpful, slightly creepy synthetic puppy dog waiting for treats. "Ellie, where are we going to exit?

"Here, boss!" she replied immediately, and updated the system hologram to show the Pax exiting FTL a fair distance out from the system. "We're set to drop in just past the outer orbit of the outermost planet."

Cayde-6 brought up the survey data on Kyza. Standard main-sequence star, two terrestrials, one gas giant, one ice planet. No terrestrial worlds in its standard lifebelt, and the two that did exist were inhospitable to anyone but geth. Lots of asteroid belts, though, which meant it was a good mining target except for... well, it _was _in the Terminus and no warlord had laid claim to the system, due to the big downer: Kyza was six light-years away from Kyzil, which was home to Heshtok, homeworld of the vorcha and all the chaos and disreputable traffic that would bring. There was a better-than-even chance that some random wildcat miner or pirate might have seen the ship emerging from FTL.

"Where's our target?" he asked.

Ellie put up a blip on the system display, indicating where they calculated the _Ameliasan_ would have orbited to based on last known position and velocity. It's location put it deep in one of the asteroid belts of the system. In fact...

"Overlay asteroid survey data," Cayde ordered. "Show me what objects are in this belt, and their paths."

Ellie did so, taking a few seconds to use the Pax's navigation computer to calculate orbital data from the last survey. She finally put up the data, filling Kyza's orbit with millions of pips indicating asteroid locations. The geth let out a curious murmur, echoed by the others around the room.

"That can't be right," Miranda muttered.

The _Ameliasan's_ calculated location overlapped with a fairly large asteroid on the edge of the belt.

"Well, that just raises some more questions," Cayde said, but he was a bit relieved that they had a clue to go on now as to how Doctor T'Soni's boat had gotten out this far.

* * *

The _Paxterae _exited faster-than-light at Ellie's coordinates, putting it into an orbit in the void a bit beyond the outermost ice planet. That in turn put them nearly three light-hours out from the target. The Pax's cameras oriented toward the _Ameliasan's_ earlier position and began scanning. They found the ship in seconds, along with the remains of the asteroid.

The _Ameliasan_ was intact, as far as they could tell. Not a bolt out of place from the files Qui'inn had supplied. It was powered down, engines cold, but giving off the residual heat from active internal life support, environmental systems, and ship electronics, which meant that its reactor was still functional. No signs of outgoing LIDAR signals or transmissions. There wasn't even anything odd about hull composition, going by the spectrometer. The ship was functional but inactive.

The asteroid that had occupied the space claimed by the _Ameliasan_ had a rather extensive numerical designation, following the standard Citadel survey conventions. Spectrographic returns from the survey probe indicated it had once been composed of heavy metals, mostly nickel-iron. Now it was gone, replaced by the specter of the asari research ship. It took time, scanning, and guesswork to figure out where the fragments of the asteroid were now located, but Ellie and the Pax's navigation computers were able to spot a few of the larger fragments by scanning for unusual orbits and movement patterns.

"Looks like when the ship emerged, the asteroid exploded internally," Ellie reported, showing the expanding pattern of asteroid fragments.

"That was a lot of energy, going by these mass estimates," Miranda mused. "Theories?"

"FTL transition's a high-energy event," Cayde said. "A mass relay generates power on that scale every time it opens a corridor. Didn't an inactive relay blow up a human moon or something?"

"Charon, yes," Miranda replied. "Broke up the ice that formed around it upon activation. But it didn't make the moon explode like a nuclear weapon."

Spencer leaned in toward the hologram and jabbed a finger at something. A moment later, Ellie highlighted the coordinates that he was indicating.

"Oooooh, processed metal alloys!" she cooed. "Icy cold. Hard to spot!"

"The hell is that?" Cayde-6 said, uploading the feeds from Ellie's analysis directly to his cyberbrain. For the umpteenth time, he wished he had access to a hyperwave scanner, but until recently he hadn't had a psychic to operate one, so the point was moot.

The object, whatever it was, had an absolutely frigid surface temperature, barely warmer than the background radiation from Kyza. Spectrographics were returning odd metallic alloy compositions, including an unusual composition of vahlenite and other metals. And it wasn't a solid structure; visuals and thermals indicated it had a pattern that was more like a latticework-

"Wormhole relay," Cayde-6 said suddenly.

Minus the massive, glowing blue machine that would have been pointing at the thing, the object resembled the relay-hijacking devices that humans had bashed together using Ethereal technology. "Resembled" being the dominant word there: Cayde brought up images of the human-designed wormhole relays and immediately saw obvious differences. This one had more of the spidery arms, the appendages were narrower, and it lacked the blisters where control and power systems would be operated by technicians. It made him think of the difference between two rifles made by different species: similar function and broadly matching design principles, but tailored to the aesthetics, preferences, and biology of each species.

"Well, that answers one question," Mesa mused, watching the developments from a crew station nearby, feet up on the console. "And puts up a couple trillion _more._"

"And they ain't gonna get answered from out here," Cayde said. "Ellie, jump us closer. One light hour."

The Pax shivered again as Ellie fired up the mass effect core, and a couple of heartbeats of red-shifted physics-twisting later, they were much closer to their target.

"Shit," Cayde muttered.

The research ship was not where they'd projected it to be. Ellie began scanning the asteroid field for irregularities. A tense couple of minutes of scanning abruptly ended with a cheery "Found 'em!" and she put up the new orbital path of the ship on the hologlobe.

It wasn't alone.

There was a blocky ship roughly one hundred and twenty meters in length docked alongside the research ship; the process had apparently altered both ship's orbits enough to throw off the original projection. Spectrographic analysis returned standard vahlenite composition, while thermals indicated the ship was, as of an hour ago, hot and active and making no attempts to conceal itself. The bright stripes of cooling panels along the ship's hull indicated it was a military vessel.

"Great, someone beat us to the draw," Mesa muttered, and Cayde nodded.

"Patterning indicates current-gen mass-produced human-turian hybrid design," Lorik said as he pored over the data. "Valkyrie-class frigate. Mercenary, most likely."

The Valkyrie was a common low-cost, mass-produced frigate made by the Corpus, mostly used by corporate or stellar government security forces. Base design used the ruggedness of proven turian engineering with cheap knock-offs of human materials and tech. Structural design matched the Corpus' unsubtle, hard-edged, and blocky pedigree, at least when it came to weaponry. It was the ship you bought when you needed space combat capability on a budget, or when you wanted to do questionable work without it being obvious who had ordered it.

"Cheap, anonymous, disposable." Miranda's scowl was audible in her voice. "Fits our enemy's pattern thus far."

"Ellie, how long have they been docked?" Cayde asked. "Is the research ship damaged?"

"Orbital drift looks like... course was altered two hours, seven minutes ago," Ellie replied. "And no damage to the research ship from what we can see here."

"Okay," the Exo said with a nod, "either there's no one on the ship to fight back or the Valk was on a rescue mission. Or said it was."

He stared at the screen for a moment.

"Jump us in closer. Ten light minutes. Go to combat alert."

Another run through FTL, lasting mere seconds. They emerged again, just over ten light minutes out. They were committed now; the mercs' ship would detect Cherenkov radiation burst at that range. Further out, and they might not be looking in the right direction to spot the radiation when it arrived, but this close in it would be too intense to miss. in ten minutes, the enemy would know the Pax was in-system.

"Find them, Ellie."

"One moment," the geth replied, humming to herself. "Oh, hey, look."

The two ships, once securely docked, were tumbling slowly away from each other, and most of the Valkyrie's lower deck had been gutted. Debris, some of it glowing white hot, was hurtling away from the ship at high velocities.

"Oh. Super."

"What the hell did that?" Miranda asked.

Spencer grunted and pointed at the holes blown in the frigate.

"Yep, that was an internal detonation," Mesa agreed. "See the outward spreading of the hull around the blast site? Looks like either onboard munitions blew or they brought something into the cargo section and it went kablooey."

Cayde stared at the feeds for a few more seconds. Whatever had happened on the Valkyrie was very recent, and it left an unpleasant feeling in his mechanical gut.

"Distress calls? Escape pods?" He doubted there would be any, but he had to ask.

"None, boss," Ellie replied. "Plenty of residual heat, but the Valkyrie is cooling down. Its reactor is offline. Hmm... backup power has kicked in. Looks like an emergency kinetic barrier is locking down the hull breach. Comms systems are not transmitting, but it could be using a hyperwave or quantum entanglement system."

"Life signs?" he asked.

"Undetermined," Ellie replied. "Nothing around the hull breach, at least. The ship's armor is blocking any other scans."

"In other words," Qui'in said, "we need to get in there to find out what happened."

"Great," Mesa muttered. "Two derelicts to board. Extra helpings of fun."

"Right then," Cayde said with a nod. "Ellie, take us in. Let's find out the good news."

* * *

"Okay then," Shepard says. "What did you find on that ship?"

"Skyrocketing insurance premiums," Cayde-6 replies. "Ha, just messing with you. I don't pay insurance. What we found on that ship was what you'd expect from a derelict. Screaming, terror, swishing dramatic capes. The usual."

* * *

_**Author's Notes: **_ Yes, it's been a while for this story. I've been busy and writer's block is a challenge.

Anyway, while I will admit that this story is taking a weird twist, it will intersect again with Shepard's story later on, and I will pull this whole thing back toward the story's original roots of XCOM and Mass Effect soon. Cayde-6 is one of this story's core characters, and this side story is just as important to the overall plot as Shepard's adventures.


	18. The Grimoire: Part Three

"I'm curious, kid," Cayde-6 says, "They say you got up close with the latest round of Ethereals. You ever seen this before?"

The Exo reaches into a pouch and produces something that might get him arrested in more reputable place: an oblong, egg-shaped hunk of smooth plastic, with ports in the front for optical wiring from sensory systems and a thick plug in the back for spinal connection hardware. While the exact design is unfamiliar to Shepard, the general shape is easy to understand. No matter the species, form follows function, and this is obviously a storage case for a cyberbrain.

"Looks like a cyberbrain, though I don't know the species," he replies.

"Yeah, neither do I," Cayde says. "And considering how long I've been alive and what I've seen, that should be pretty damn scary, son. Especially considering what I pulled this thing out of."

* * *

**_The Grimoire: Part Three_**

* * *

Pain was the first thing that slammed into its awareness. It calmly regarded the agony, and pushed it aside, instead access internal systems.

A check of the chronometer showed it had been inactive for eight minutes and seventeen seconds. Medigel applications were repairing cranial damage. Pain lanced along its body, but was not debilitating. Diagnostics of armor and equipment showed minimal loss of functionality. Medical systems reported minor injuries along back and left leg, in addition to cranial trauma. Implants were active and functional.

Foxtrot Eight-One-Three reopened its eyes.

Probability of combat encounters: extremely high based on previously-available information. Environmental status of cargo deck: compromised, according to limited mesh reports. Foxtrot Eight-One-Three assessed its armament while reestablishing local mesh connections.

Assessment of surroundings: Portside aft secondary cargo bay, used for storing perishable supplies. Room was dark save for emergency lighting. Local mesh connections sporadic. Majority of cargo deck offline due to electrical pulse prior to munitions detonation. No friendly unit responses from this deck. Access to crew deck located three meters left via internal access hatch.

Foxtrot Eight-One-Three moved toward the hatch while finishing equipment diagnostics. Plasma rifle: intact and functional. High-frequency blade: intact and functional. Psionic amplification systems: minor damage to regulatory systems but otherwise functional. Cranial implant: intact and functional.

The ship's internal mesh was severely damaged. The intruders had done massive damage to data systems and communications. Foxtrot Eight-One-Three's comms system had to work to reroute around damage while it cut open the hatch with the blade and entered the crawlspace. There was no gravity within the maintenance sections to ease movement, and it advanced quickly.

_Attempting link with other units in squad…. No response, no connection._

_Attempting link with other units in platoon…. No response, no connection._

_Attempting link with other local friendlies…. No response, no connection._

_Attempting link with external communications - initiate sole-survivor emergency override protocol…. Connection established._

Foxtrot Eight-One-Three patched into the ship's comms systems. Hyperwave offline. Long-range comm buoy systems offline. Quantum entanglement communicator online.

It patched in emergency codes and sent them to the QEC's twin on the other side of the galaxy. Response came back instantly.

_We receive you, Foxtrot Eight-One-Three. Upload status._

It took a couple of seconds to send a full XP upload of what Foxtrot had seen before losing consciousness.

Several more seconds passed as the Replica climbed up to the crew deck.

_Foxtrot Eight-One-Three: Situation is critical. IMMOLATE SUNDOWN protocols engaged. Direct intervention necessary._

Foxtrot Eight-One-Three emerged into the crew deck, exiting the hatch within the frigate's infirmary. It crouched, sweeping the area with scanners and its rifle, confirming all clear. It sent that message along the quantum communicator, and then adjusted settings on the psionic implant within its cranium.

_Port is open,_ it reported, and the Replica laid down on the floor once it was sure the room was clear. _Safe position assumed._

_Standby for remote personality override X-223-MBS-PHANTOM. _

**_Assuming direct control._**

Foxtrot Eight-One-Three's visor glowed a faint purple, and its body twitched violently. There was a cold, rippling sensation, shifting into a dizzying disorientation as the blank functionality of the Replica was rewritten with history, personality, beliefs, and ambitions.

When the body stopped convulsing, he lay there for a moment, acclimating himself to smells and textures of the hardsuit, glancing over the interface and settling into his new body. He took a moment to review the logs and situation, though he already knew their objectives; he always did when they put a fork on standby for direct intervention.

"Alright then," he said, and smiled beneath his faceplate, as he always did when taking over a Replica. It hurt a bit, using muscles that had never been worked in that manner before, but it felt good and helped him acclimate. He stood up, rolling his neck, and his fingers tapped the sheathed blade on his back and the rifle strapped across his chest.

"Time to get this situation _un_fucked."

* * *

"Ellie, bring us alongside the Valkyrie," Cayde ordered. "We'll use the u-collar to link up. Take your extra… uh, yous, in the launch pod and sweep the research ship while we clear the frigate."

The _Paxterae_ closed to within a kilometer of the two derelicts, matching orbital velocity. The asari research craft was closer, and Ellie rolled the _Pax_'s flank to present the starboard keel to the vessel. While the frigate didn't have a shuttle, it did feature a repair and cargo transferral pod affixed to the cargo deck. As with most of his equipment, Cayde had scavenged and refurbished the cylindrical device, this one coming from a salarian repair platform that had intercepted a meteorite and been scattered across half a star system.

Ellie had stuffed the pod with half a dozen hoppers, most of them loaded with scanning equipment or microdrone launchers. Coupled with more than half a dozen more that she had scattered throughout the _Pax_ direct-linked to the systems, it was far more hopper platforms than she'd started with when she'd joined the crew. She apparently assembled them out of spare parts and minifabricators. Cayde would have been worried about Ellie assembling her own drone platoon if they weren't covered in pink and yellow paint with smiling animal faces.

Also, Cayde-6 wasn't going to admit that he would _totally _be building his own robot army if he could, with faux evil laughter to accompany it.

The _Pax_ shuddered slightly as the pod launched toward the _Amelisean,_ and the frigate continued on its way toward the drifting Valkyrie. This close in, they could easily make out the coloration on the hull, a generic dark gray with no identifying marks. Cayde tried running a hull match to see what shipyard had produced it, but came back with nothing conclusive. Corpus shipyards in the Terminus had a history of building ships like Valkyries "off the grid" and not registering hull compositions and patterns. They didn't like being linked to their customers' indiscretions, and many of the mercs and pirates with enough money to buy new ships disliked leaving a data trail.

"Looks like some bodies were ejected," Mesa said, eyeing the sensor feeds. "Mostly human, a few turians and salarians. Hmm." She leaned closer to the console, waving a three fingered hand over it. "Hard to tell, but I think they're wearing uniform hardsuits and armor."

"NC 'independent' mercs, likely," Miranda said. "Pretty much just New Conglomerate troops wearing non-identifiable gear. They tend to be well-equipped and organized. Discipline, on the other hand… not so much." She scratched her chin, looking over the same feeds that Mesa was receiving. "Normally the NC wouldn't be hiding their presence like this in the Terminus. They're not afraid of pissing off random warlords or pirates."

"These fellas are worried about much meaner things catching them than some tinpot planetary dictator," Cayde said. "Y'know. Like us."

"Why would anyone be afraid of you?' Bakara rumbled. Cayde opened his mandibles, but she cut him off. "If you say the word 'cape' you will be replacing all of your limbs."

"...anyway, Ellie, ETA?" Cayde asks.

"Couple of minutes," she replied. "Synched with remote platforms. You want me to come with you?"

"Yeah, I suspect we'll need your big body on that tub," the Exo replied.

Outside, the drifting mercenary frigate loomed closer, the enormous jagged wound visible on its gently-rotating hull.

* * *

The central deck of the frigate was littered with debris and bodies. He didn't know what it was that hit them, leaving charred corpses of Replica security and normal organic crew scattered about. Plasma scoring sliced up and down the walls, narrow tracks of boiled metal that almost resemble blade cuts in their precision. Foxtrot Eight-One-Three didn't get a chance to see what attacked them before being knocked out by the explosion in the cargo deck.

He stepped over the body of a salarian bisected by scalpel-like plasma, and around blood pooling on the decks. Main lights flickered off and on, and damaged emergency strips cast everything in a dim red glow. He moved slowly, with balanced, silent steps, wary of any noise or interference indicating something else was nearby. Danger could come from any direction, much like high school.

It looked like the crew tried to make a stand in the central mess, which was right on the path between the cargo elevator and the bridge access elevator. The Valkyrie was designed with repelling boarders in mind, so if you wanted to reach the bridge, you had to move through a chokepoint into the biggest room on the main deck. The mess made for a good tactical position, and it did precisely jack shit to stop whatever had been murdering its way through the frigate.

The room was torn to shreds, tables warped and broken, bodies scattered and burned apart. A food dispenser was merrily dropping piles of processed ration goop all over a decapitated Replica's chest, and a turian command officer in a hardsuit was impaled against a wall by the jagged edge of half a metal table. The carnage was kind of impressive, and he took a moment to let it all sink in.

_Core, you're receiving?_ he sent.

_Affirmative._

_Proceeding to secure locker. Sending you data uploads. Any idea what hit this ship?_

A few seconds passed as the people on the other end processed what he was sending. He didn't know how many infomorphs, artificial intelligences, and flesh-and-blood organics were operating on the other end. They compartmentalized like a motherfucker.

They got back to him as he moved aft, into the half-molten hatch connecting the mess to the storage sections and crew quarters. A dozen people had been pumping energy and kinetic weapons into this hallway, mangling it with jagged tears and gaping holes. He stepped with silent caution, edging past the torn metal and into a pitch-black corridor.

_Negative_, Core finally reported. _Cannot provide accurate assessment on hostiles based on present data._

"Whoopty-fuckin'-doo," he muttered under his breath. "Thanks for being useless."

_Proceeding to the secure locker,_ he sent over the quantum communicator.

Aft of the crew section were secure containment areas for high-value items: ship brig, armory, and a captain-access only high-value cargo locker. Normally, cutting through security was as easy, and literal, as a few swipes with a sturdy HF blade, but the locker was located behind a heavy security door that used reactive fortification to repel such weapons. Fortunately, he had better means of bypassing security: a direct link to Core.

_At the locker,_ he reported, linking in with hardline fiber-optic wires from the Replica's tactical omnitool. He closed his eyes and steadied himself, and for an instant everything flickered. He shook his head, catching himself from falling. Core never allowed operatives to be conscious when they used them as conduits to transfer remote override codes. Again, compartmentalization.

The door beeped and slid backward a couple of centimeters, before hissing aside into the wall. Beyond was a fairly large space, big enough to contain a full-sized airtruck.

Doctor Liara T'Soni drifted in the stasis pod that nearly filled the entire compartment.

"Ding-a-ding," he murmured.

The pod was a head-on collision of mismatching technology. The front interface next to the pod was human-built, and the armor-glass casing on the front was a familiar asari medical design, custom-remodeled to fit into the contours of the machine. The wiring connecting the pod's power and control systems was a chaotic mix of jury-rigged adapters between human and alien circuitry, with custom-fabricated components to link the disparate equipment together. The pod itself was an enormous, egg-like device of dull brown metal, sitting on a trio of heavy struts. Despite the rounded shape and lack of edges, there was nothing subtle or elegant about the machine; it was big, heavy, and clearly intended for something much bigger than the asari floating in the suspension inside.

T'Soni was a lean, pale-skinned asari clad in a form-fitting gray-white neural interface suit that covered her entire body. A heavy, elongated helmet completely encased her head, her features hidden behind an opaque faceplate. Sockets and plugs lined the waterproof fabric of the suit, and circuitry ran across its surface in miniscule hexagonal patterns. Cables and tubes connected across her spine, shoulders, neck, and head, with even more jury-rigged interfaces and custom adaptors linking alien technologies together. Within the enormous pod, she looked like a child.

_Found T'Soni,_ he sent.

_Status?_ Core asked.

"Uh…." He leaned down, checking the terminal. She seemed stable, as far as he could tell.

_Looks fine. Pulling data and sending you a dump. I dunno about these neural readings, though._

_We receive. Standby._

He circled around the pod while waiting for a response, making sure nothing looked out of place. Well, beyond the enormous, alien device itself.

_Neural readings unstable,_ Core reported. _T'Soni appears to have been traumatically disconnected from the network, but the Eliksni machinery is keeping her stable for now. _

_How long until extraction?_

_We have a ship en route. ETA one hour, seventeen minutes. _

He was about to respond when he got a ping from the Valkyrie's sensors. It was a weak signal, transmitted through the ship's battered mesh, coming from security spimes in the cargo deck. A hatch was just forced open, and there were minor disturbances in artificial gravity, indicating someone moving around. A quick check showed no friendly signals from that deck.

_We've been boarded,_ he sent. _Orders?_

_Hold position and observe,_ Core immediately replied. _Do not engage unless they find the pod. Priority is to protect T'Soni and the data in her head._

He nodded, stepping out of the chamber and sealing it behind him. He gripped the high-frequency blade, slowly twirling it in his hand, and initiated his active camouflage.

He disappeared from sight and sensors, and went silent, waiting and watching.

* * *

"Docked and locked, Boss!" Ellie called over the team radio, and the universal collar beeped an echoing confirmation. The u-collar extended from the side of the _Pax_ and spread outward into the gap torn in the side of the hull a bit forward of the main wound in the cargo bay. A clever bit of salarian tech devised for boarding operations. Cayde-6 was happy to steal it.

"Anything from the asari ship?" Cayde asked as his team stood on the opposite side of the tube, the Exo in the lead.

"We've cut through the airlock now, starting the infiltration," she replied. "Ooh, dead bodies already. Squishy!"

"Ellie, stop poking the recently deceased," Cayde admonished her as he walked down the docking tube. Standard rule: cross the tube single file, and send the most expendable/toughest guy across first. None of Cayde's crew were expendable, so he went across instead.

"If you do poke them," Bakara cut in, "Get me scans and samples and forward them to my omnitool. I need to know how they died."

"Yay, poking corpses for science!"

"Do I _want _to see her data feeds?" Miranda asked, and Cayde shrugged.

"If you like seeing hoppers and gremlins poking people who've been cut in half by plasma fire, be my guest," he replied.

In truth, there weren't that many corpses, and it wasn't exceptionally gruesome. He counted a couple of bodies drifting in the dark, zero-gravity confines of the asari research ship, and unsurprisingly they were asari. One was a scientist who had been cleaved in half by plasma fire, leaving ragged, cauterized flesh where the corpse was split apart. The other was a security guard in a hardsuit who had died to a neat, precise beam through the torso. The interior of the skip was bathed in inky darkness, Ellie's scouts making their way through the interior corridors with thermal sensors, clambering along walls and ceilings or flying through the passageways. Every body they came across was cold, estimated dead for hours at least.

So, they had two derelicts full up on dead folks for the price of one. Lovely.

The door terminating the airlock hissed open, spreading inwards, and Cayde stepped through, the Last Word up and ready to shoot. His first glance indicated and first step confirmed that gravity was still online. The cargo bay was strewn with heavy metal crates and debris. A few bodies lay sprawled here and there, some in generic blue and gray coveralls and others in the olive drab and gray of Replica. Nothing moved, and aside from air currents and a few functional electronics, he found no heat sources.

Stepping further into the bay, the Exo could see out into the vast field of stars beyond the edge of the emergency kinetic barrier. The debris stretching across the hangar spread outward from that point, and he could see the gnarled, molten remains of a shuttlecraft docking rig extending from the ceiling and wall. He turned, sweeping over the walls, ceiling, and floor, and confirmed jagged shards of heat-warped metal and ceramic lodged into surfaces across the bay.

"Our explosive was on their shuttle," he reported as he took a few more steps into the room, moving toward the nearest mass of ruined cargo and crew. Behind him, he heard someone else touch down into the bay, boots lightly tapping across the hangar's floor grating. His tactical feed showed it was Spencer. Mesa was a few seconds behind him, followed by Miranda, Bakara, Qui'in, and Ellie.

Miranda took point, crossing the hangar and passing Cayde, blade in hand. Her mask was deployed, and she swept that blank metal visage across the room, looking down at each corpse as she passed. She suddenly halted next to a Replica that was mostly intact, save for the arm-length hunk of metal that had impaled its torso. She slowly crouched next to it, peering over the body with a careful eye, judging by her body language.

"You got an interest in these corpses?" Cayde-6 asked pausing next to her while the rest of the crew spread out, scanning the bay. Ellie was launching microdrones to scan the nooks and corners of the bay, while Spencer and Mesa moved out to check side storage rooms. Qui'in paced around the bay, scanning with his omnitool, and Bakara lumbered up next to them to cast a quizzical eye over the body Miranda was examining.

"This kit is the same as that which the Replica assault units on Illium wore," she murmured. "Exact same loadout." She reached down and grabbed the Replica's left arm just below the elbow, and fiddled with a catch on the armor. "The autopsy reports showed that the Replica's hands and faces were incinerated by implanted thermal charges."

The gauntlet the Replica wore clicked and slid loose, and the hand flopped to the deck.

"Interesting," Bakara mused, firing up her omnitool and scanning the exposed, pale skin. The hand _looked_ mostly like a human's, except that the fingers were slightly longer and narrower than Cayde was familiar with. Kinda vaguely salarian, by his guess.

"The Illium Replica had unusual amounts of sectoid DNA integrated into them," Miranda, said, and she flicked on her HF blade. Electricity hummed along the sword's edge, and she lightly applied the edge to the faceplate of the Replica's helmet. She worked the blade slowly down the side, and then hooked her fingers in the plate with her free hand.

"You are _very _familiar with these things," Cayde remarked, and Miranda nodded. She twisted and tugged on the plate, and it popped loose with barely any effort.

"An understatement, Miranda," Bakara said, crouching and looking closely at the Replica's face.

It _definitely _wasn't human. The eyes were enormous, much larger than a human's. The nose was flatter, with larger nostrils. Kind of like a feline's nose, to be honest. The mouth was a thin, narrow slit with very little of the lip shape that was characteristic of humans, quarians, or asari.

"Who'd want to hide that pretty face with incendiaries?" Cayde quipped.

"Someone worried about PR," Miranda said, standing. "It's one thing to look at a DNA sequencing readout and see how many letters and numbers correspond to sectoids."

"But seeing big pictures of these fellas puts it in a whole 'nother light, I agree," Cayde said. "Ain't that why they use Replica in the first place? Even if they're pretty much drones, they're still something a human can relate to."

"Precisely," Miranda said with a nod.

"But these ain't," Cayde mused, prodding the body with his foot. "So ATC was worried about blowback and triggered those thermals."

"Or someone who ATC can order to press the button," Miranda replied with a nod.

"Boss!" Ellie called, and the trio looked up. The geth loomed at the far end of the bay, among scattered cargo crates thrown about by the explosion. Many of them looked like they had come off the research ship, going by their markings. She stood next to something big and metallic, about the size of a small aircar. Qu'inn was standing next to it, scanning with his omnitool, his mandibles tight against his jaw in concentration.

"Found something else new and terrifying?" Cayde asked, walking over and leaving Miranda and Bakara to inspect the Replica corpse. "Wondering what the researchers found that killed everyone and blew up that mercs' shuttle."

Cayde came to a halt when he saw the rounded, oblong metal shape. The hull of the machine was shaped in an almost organic fashion, with no sharp edges, save for a pair of long, four-barrelled cannons protruding from blisters along the machine's lower sides. A pair of flat, disc-like thrusters extended from the top sides of the machine, and clusters of dome-like sensors adorned the front, underneath a grilled opening that looked like it vented excess heat from the inside of the machine.

"I've never seen a machine like this," Qu'inn mused. "Some element zero masses, but the electronics and engineering are completely foreign. Some sort of drone, I suspect. Hull sampling is returning some unusual alloys, including vahlenite derivatives."

"Because it's eliksni," Cayde murmured, walking around the machine, recognizing the engineering. He brought up old files as he did so, comparing them to the samples he'd seen a long time ago.

"What?" Qu'inn asked, and Ellie's plating twitched a bit around her eye-light, the glowing sensors locking onto the Exo with disturbing intensity.

"You'd know 'em as the Fallen," Cayde said. "Terminus species, not very friendly. Not much known about them. Most folks who do know 'em find out right before they get vaporized. Raiders and pirates, mostly. Been roaming these stars since before the asari found the Citadel, by most accounts."

Cayde crouched beside the cannons on the left side of the machine, running a gloved finger across the metal.

"Not seen this particular machine before, but I know this metalwork and engineering. No reason for something like this to be on an NC ship unless they brought it aboard from the researchers' boat."

"So, this is part of what they found," Qu'inn said. "Ancient eliksni technology. Is this somehow connected to _Oronvik?_"

"You said your Broker agent sent a mission complete message," Cayde replied. "This must have been part of what they found."

On a hunch, Cayde brought up the sensor readings Ellie had collected on the wormhole array the research ship had plowed through, and he compared them to similar arrays built by humans. Now that he knew what to look for, Cayde could see the distinct engineering differences: rounded, almost organic metal on the former, while sharp edges and blunt angles on the latter.

The wormhole array the hapless researchers had come through was built by the Fallen at some point.

"No corrosion on the vahlenite components," Qu'inn mused. "But non-vahlenite machinery appears to have been severely corroded. Nothing organic inside, either. If it was, it's rotted away."

"Thing's old. Might predate asari spaceflight," Cayde said, standing up. "Great. Whole buncha other questions to ask now."

* * *

The geth hoppers sprang and clambered through _Amelisean_'s dead corridors, flooding the air with microdrones that only showed up on the finest of sensor scans. Gremlins floated down the passages, releasing scanning pulses to map the interior of the ship, thrusters and mass effect fields casting dim blue shadows across the corpse-filled interior of the devastated asari vessel. The hoppers and gremlins paused by each floating body, carefully analyzing their wounds to determine what killed them, as well as collecting facial recognition scans. Some of the hoppers poked and prodded the bodies in what seemed like macabre curiosity.

Which, she reflected, was super _weird_ for geth.

Avoiding the gremlins and their scans were easy enough. Your typical wraith-cloak could prevent mapping scanners from picking you up, and hers was very specially upgraded with stupendously illegal modifications. Microdrones, on the other hand, were a more serious problem, because no amount of cloaking tech was going to prevent a lady from occupying space, and the moment one of them touched her otherwise-invisible skin, the geth would know something was strange.

She moved carefully, slipping around the expanding clouds of the microscopic mapping machines, observing them passively by tracking the miniscule energy readings from their propulsion systems. While she kept her muscles relaxed, she was still tense and watchful, and worried that any instant a bot she hadn't detected would brush up against her.

The geth didn't react as she evaded them. Either she'd slipped them, or they'd spotted her and didn't respond. Either was quite possible, but the latter was naturally more worrying. There had been a few times in her career when a security system did the latter, and she'd usually ended up shooting her way out of it.

Whether detected and ignored, or undetected and still-amazing, she had no choice. Thus far, she knew of only one way off this wreck of a ship: the boarding pod that these geth had used to come across to the _Amelisean_. Of course, what she was going to do after she got there was another story. The few external sensors still functioning showed a Frankenstein of a turian frigate out there, and the mauled remains of the Valkyrie loaded with the idiots who had come to loot the research vessel.

The survivor in her wanted her to try and get to the newcomers' ship, hijack it, and be on her way. Space piracy was a rarity in her line of work, but she wasn't averse to forking a dozen copies of herself and making off with someone's boat.

But she had a job to do, and that involved getting on board the New Conglomerate Valkyrie, because that was where they'd taken Doctor T'Soni.

She fought the urge to sigh. There was a reason she preferred stealing - no, correction, "recovering," that was the word she used in government work - inanimate objects.

The repurposed repair pod was locked into place on the main docking port, and aside from the drifting bodies of the unlucky scientists who'd tried to flee this way, the compartment was empty. She pushed herself toward the airlock, accessing its systems and overriding reporting protocols in mid-flight. Couldn't do to tell everyone she was opening it, right?

The doors hissed open near-silently, and she moved inside, locking her helmet down in case of atmosphere loss. The door sealed closed behind her, and she brought up the interface to the outer hatch, which was linked to the repair pod the geth had used. Naturally, it was locked, so she began running scans and identified the model of the pod. A salarian system, surprisingly. That was going to make this tricky.

She started running through her library of known exploits for that model, and began checking for physical workarounds. Salarian designs were notorious among the criminally-minded because of how hit-or-miss they were on security programming. Either you had a vacuum-tight system with no exploits thanks to insane security testing, or you found something so hastily-programmed by a hyperactive coder that you could practically walk in.

But she didn't get time to find out which was the case.

"Why hello there!" blared a cheery female voice directly overhead, and she froze in place. She turned slowly, checking to make sure her pistol was loaded, charged, and ready, and looked up.

The geth hopper emerged from a wraith cloak, flashlight eye peering down at her from its vantage point on the ceiling. It detached one of the arms from the top of the airlock and waved down to her, and a holographic ":D" appeared in front of the machine's eye. Like the others, it was painted bright pink and yellow.

"Hi," she replied, and managed a smile back at the cheerful geth. "That's not usually the first thing I hear when I get caught."

"My name is Ellie, and we're here to conduct search and rescue!" the hopper said. "You look like a survivor. Are you a survivor? I really hope you're a survivor."

_Oh my, you are the most _adorable _thing,_ she thought.

"Kasumi Goto," the thief replied. "And yes I am a survivor. Though unfortunately, I suspect I'm the only one."

The geth - Ellie - paused, leaning a bit closer. The eye whirred, clicked, narrowed, and then expanded.

"Oh, okay." she replied. "That's great! I've never met an XCOM Intelligence agent before!"

Kasumi froze, staring at the geth for a moment.

"Wait, _what?"_

* * *

The elevator to the central crew deck was nonfunctional, stuck at the top of the elevator shaft. The shaft was dim, lit only by the lamps attached to their helmets and weapons. The car loomed overhead, blank, dark metal blocking their path.

"Miranda," Cayde said with a nod toward the car, and she glanced to Ellie. Without a word, the geth grabbed her by the waist and lifted her up high enough that she could reach the bottom of the car. Everyone scrambled aside as she drew and engaged her high-frequency blade. Four quick swipes and a shower of brilliant, dancing sparks later, and a slab of metal tumbled down with a tremendous _clang_ that shook the shaft.

"Okay, I'm up first," Cayde said, looking up toward the hole while Ellie set Miranda down. "Can I get a-"

Ellie reached over, grabbed him by the cloak, and chucked him up into the hole. He slammed into the deck of the elevator with a mechanical rattle akin to someone dumping a truckload of scrap metal out a window.

"Warn me next time!"

"Sorry, busy," Ellie replied, cheery but terse. Cayde drew the Last Word and swept the corridor right outside the elevator. Clear, save for corpses.

"Alright, Bakara, Mesa, Miranda, up here with me," he called. "Spencer, Qui'in, Ellie, get to engineering and see what you can find. We'll-"

"Hey!" Miranda blurted as she flew up through the hole. She flipped over into a graceful tumble and landed on her feet.

"-sweep the upper decks, search for survivors," Cayde continued, without missing a beat. Mesa grunted as Ellie chucked her up into the hole, landing lightly on her feet with laser pistols in hand.

"Do not even consider it," Bakara warned. A couple of seconds later, Bakara's head rose into view and she pushed herself up into the elevator, helped by Ellie's gentle lifting.

"No one tosses a krogan?" Cayde asked.

"Those who attempt to often marvel at how they can be beaten to death with their own limbs," Bakara rumbled.

"Okay, Miranda, Bakara, check this deck. Mesa and myself will help ourselves to the bridge. Keep your eyes open, don't know what else killed these folks. Could be they're still about. And hey, Ellie?"

"Yes, boss?"

"Anything interesting over there?"

"Nothing yet, boss. Will update if I find something you need to hear about."

* * *

"You're XCOM Intelligence," Ellie repeated, the hopper skittering a bit closer, flashlight head twisting a bit in curiosity.

"Ah, nope," Kasumi said, leaning a bit back and crossing her arms. She quietly armed the ECM launcher on her omnitools, and her fingers brushed the concealed pistol at her hardsuit's waistband. The whole outfit was made for stealth and evasion, but she'd be remiss if she hadn't included direct combat augments.

The hopped leaned down a bit closer, and Kasumi's cortical implants picked up the emissions of several scanner searching over her features. It probably wouldn't hit a facial recognition, considering how often she swapped bodies, but that didn't exactly matter, as she was already ID'd. It had to be reading her facial features and various biomarkers, along with her voice patterns. Time to turn on the bullshit.

"You're rather _terribly_ misinformed," she continued, meeting the glowing eye, while considering how to get into the boarding pod. "You're right as far as who I am - good eye there - but I'm not with XCOM."

The last part, at least, was very much true. Kasumi and government agencies… didn't mix well.

Another hopper appeared in the compartment beyond the airlock, clinging to the floor and watching her.

"I'm geth," the nearest hopper replied, the cheerful female voice not changing. "We're not misinformed." The eyes turned a bit. "But you probably are. Scanner shows you're telling your version of the truth."

The hopper jerked back, settling on its haunches like an upside-down dog, but Kasumi could still pick up the scanning pulses.

"You say you're not XCOM, but you're using XCOM security bypasses on my pod," Ellie said. "Not a bad idea, because those are always up to date and can bypass most security. Because we write most of them."

Kasumi narrowed her eyes. No point in protesting that, because she'd actually ripped most of those programs from XCOM data hubs a few weeks back, and added a few tweaks of her own. A girl had to keep on top of her game in the galactic security business.

"Sorry, not XCOM. I don't work well with law enforcement or military," the thief replied. "The scientists contracted me as a security specialist."

"What kind of security?" Ellie asked.

"Breaking and entry. Prospect of breaking into a Prothean or quarian vault was very intriguing."

"What killed everyone here?" the geth asked, and Kasumi took a moment to process that shift in the conversation.

"That's actually a good question," she murmured. "Because…. As far as I remember, the ship _itself _did most of the killing."

* * *

Phantom picked up the impact sound of the elevator car being sliced open, and was positioned outside the corridor when they emerged. Hidden under his cloak, he hid in a doorway intersecting the elevator corridor and crouched low to the deck, out of the way of enemy eyes and sensors.

_Core, transmitting data on intruders,_ he reported as the spindly figure of a turian emerged, wearing a ratty, bullet-riddled cloak. The glowing eyes and chrome skin indicated an Exo. The turian was trailed by a neo-quarian in red and black spacer's jacket and jumpsuit, a looming krogan in white armor, and a humanoid female in gray armor plating that covered her head to toe, a high-frequency blade in hand.

_We receive,_ Core replied. _Analyzing. _

The Exo gestured forward, and he and the neo-quarian advanced up the passage toward the mess. The krogan and the woman with the HF blade turned and began moving in the opposite direction, toward Phantom's hiding spot. He slowly pushed himself back, out of their path, and made sure his drone spoofers were ready to conceal himself from scouting clouds.

_Uploading analysis. Intruders identified._

Phantom took a quick glance over the dossiers that Core sent him, and suppressed a curse as the names and information passed. While the name Cayde-6 meant nothing to him, the fact that this crew had been responsible for the shitshow on Illium meant that the Shadow Broker was right behind them.

So, turian Exo, unknown age and iteration, armed with "unspecified thermal weaponry" and extensive combat skills, blah blah. Urdnot Bakara, krogan shaman, doctor, scientist, diplomat, heavy weapons specialist. Oddly intelligent for a krogan. Unknown neo-quarian, specialist in sidearms and marksmanship. Woman with the blade, unknown, but possibly-

A twitch ran through Phantom's body, a physical reaction to his uploaded personality having an unexpectedly intense spike of pure, seething, _rage._

There was a greater than even chance the woman was Miranda Lawson.

Phantom's fingers hurt, and he relaxed the iron-tight hold on his blade's grip. But as he watched her and the krogan moved down the corridor, sweeping toward the aft end of the crew deck, he noticed telltale elements of the way she moved. Placement of the feet, the smooth, quick precision of her pistol as she checked each corner, the balance in the torso and hips. He recognized them perfectly.

After all, they were _his._

Once the pair passed him, none-the-wiser, Phantom relaxed. His fingers loosened around the grip of his blade, and then tightened. With a smooth, arcing lift of his hand, he drew his sword from its scabbard, the weapon emerging in still silence.

_Core, they're heading toward T'Soni's pod,_ he transmitted. _Will engage at best opportunity._

_Acknowledged,_ Core replied. _Directives updated. Terminate all of Cayde-6's crew._

_With pleasure,_ he replied, and took a silent, prowling step out of concealment toward the pair. He tried to steady his hand, but a tremor of anticipation flickered through it.

_Please be Lawson,_ he thought, and an ugly clone's grin twisted his features beneath his mask. _Please pleaseplease._

* * *

The elevator to the bridge was locked down, and surrounded by half a dozen armored figures who had died protecting the doorway.

"This scoring on the walls means the plasma came from multiple directions," Mesa said, examining the bodies while Cayde unlocked the elevator. "They were caught in a crossfire."

Cayde looked up. They were at a T-junction, with side passages splitting off into gunnery and ops rooms for the Valkyrie's main batteries. There was no way to access those compartments without coming down this passage.

"Either these folks could teleport, or they had set up an ambush by the time these men got down to this corridor," Cayde mused, poking one of the mercenary corpses with his foot. Or maybe….

"Psychic?" he suggested, glancing up at the neo-quarian. "Maybe mind control, or a super-fast Physical like your boyfriend?"

Mesa's scowl told him all he needed to hear regarding that, and he went back to checking his intrusion software. A quiet ping that was only audible to his AR audio indicated that they were in, and the doors slid open.

The lift was functional, unlike its previous companion, and they rode it up in silence, weapons at the ready. When the doors slid open, they stepped out into the warship's bridge and CIC. It was a single compartment, long and narrow, with banks of consoles surrounding a central holographic projector. The pair's guns swept over dead consoles and even more dead crew, who had been cut apart by more plasma beams that sliced through chairs and terminals, leaving scattering hunks of molten machinery and ceramic littering the deck.

"How many dead, you suppose?" Mesa wondered as they stepped out into the CIC.

"Ship this size?" Cayde-6 replied. "Normally has a meatspace crew of about thirty, maybe five to ten infolife or VIs. Plus a platoon of Replica, we're looking at sixty to seventy."

"Fits," Mesa said, crouching beside a turian wearing gray a naval jumpsuit. The crewman had died with a gun in hand. "No mind control," she said after a second. "Been checking these weapons. Mostly kinetics and a few lasers. All of the bodies died to plasma fire. Very precise plasma."

"Like a marksman rifle?" Cayde asked as he circled around the CIC. "Hey, there's the captain's chair up there."

"Not a sniper rifle," she murmured. "These beak marks… make me think of a plasma cutter, only with much longer range. Burned hot enough to boil right through armor…."

She crouched next to another body, inspecting it, and then glanced up to Cayde. There was a ramp that rose up beside the elevator, leading to a platform toward the bow of the ship. A pilot's station was located up there, and directly over the elevator was a chair surrounded by consoles. Cayde leaned over it, peering at the electronics while spinning the chair around with a finger.

"Some of these plasma cuts start halfway along the torso and slice outward. Thermal ablation across the armor plating indicates… looks like the plasma was briefly halted by a kinetic barrier before it broke through the shield and cut apart the armor and the body underneath. That implies some serious kinetic force behind the plasma…."

"Yeah?" Cayde-6 asked, lighting up his omnitool and plugging a wire from it into the captain's console.

"Cayde, I've never seen a plasma gun operate like this," Mesa said, standing up. The Exo looked up, eyes widening by the sliver his turian construction allowed.

"You saying this is new?" he asked.

"Most plasma is a violent river of thermal, burny murder," she said. "Hard to control to any precise degree even with magnetic fields. There's a reason why most people use kinetics for extreme-range sniper weapons. These are plasma wounds, but they're laser-precise. No one has tech like that. Least not that I know of."

"Eliskni, maybe?" Cayde asked, but shook his head. "No, this isn't their style. They'd have stripped the ship. Most of the dead they leave behind don't have these wounds, either."

Mesa rose and began checking the aft end of the CIC, stepping over and examining each body and beam mark.

"Could be Collectors," Cayde called as he worked through the captain's security. "Not familiar with their personal weapons, but they use some kind of precise beam gun on their ships. Particle accelerator, I think."

"No, this is plas-" Mesa said, and then halted.

"Oooh, find something?" Cayde asked, looking up. Mesa was standing in the middle of the deactivate holographic projector, crouched by an object on the deck. In the light-beam from her omnitool, it a kind of egg-shaped hunk of smooth metal or plastic.

"Maybe," Mesa replied. "Looks like a cyberbrain storage unit…."

"Just lying on the deck in the middle of the bridge," Cayde said cocking his head to the side.

"Yeah, except I think it's…" Mesa reached down toward the device, and brushed her fingers over the surface.

And at that moment, right as every console in the ship lit up, Cayde-6 realized that they had fucked up.

* * *

Spencer was rooting through the debris in the cargo hold and shuttle bay, listening to Ellie's Juggernaut platform hum to itself, when a distinct tingle ran down his spine. He jumped up to his feet, hands clenched.

"Oh, hey, power spike," Ellie exclaimed, dropping the debris she was moving and reaching for her plasma cannon.

"What was that?" Qui'in called over the comm, as Ellie pivoted, plasma cannon lighting up and rising to her shoulder.

"Anomalous energy spike!" Ellie yelled back, all smiles and sunshine. "We might be about to die!"

Spencer grunted, but the tail end of the cave-man vocalization was drowned out by the sudden whine of engines and crackle of electricity.

And in the middle of the bay, the enormous eliksni machine lurched up off the deck, , cannons lighting up and a glowing, malevolent purple light erupting from the front vents of the machine.

It pivoted toward them, and lightning erupted from the cannons and seared across the bay toward Ellie and Spencer.

* * *

"The hell is this?" Miranda murmured as she stood in front of the looming eliksni machine on the crew deck, hidden behind a formerly-secure compartment.

"More alien technology," bakara said, sizing up the stasis pod. "It contains an asari. One of the researchers, most likely."

"Best clue for figuring out what happened here," Miranda said. "Can we get it open? Get her out of there?"

"I will need to examine the machine and check her vitals," Bakara muttered. "Then I can determine-"

They both spun at the same moment, both the krogan and the human reacting to the presence behind them - the latter through her cyberware and sensors pickup a faint electromagnetic distortion, and the former through pure instinct.

A high-frequency blade flashed under Bakara's arm as she brought her shotgun up, pierced her armor like it was an eggshell, and erupted out her back in a spray of orange blood. Miranda skittered sideways, her own HF sword rising up and stabbing at the armored figure who'd emerged from cloak behind them.

The man was already ripping his blade free, pushing off against Bakara's chest as the krogan thrashed, snarled ing gasping. He twisted his head and body underneath Miranda's blade, weaving away from the sparking edge as if he knew where she was aiming before she herself did. His weapon came loose in another spray of krogan blood, and whipped up, knocking her sword aside and slicing toward her face. A crash of arcing lightning lit up the corridor as she parried, and he backed away, sword rising to a high guard.

"Trick or treat, motherfucker," he muttered, his tone low and mocking. His face was hidden behind a blank Replica's visor, but Miranda could _hear_ the smile in his voice, before he darted forward, bloodstained sword cutting toward her.

* * *

"Mesa, _don't touch the thing!"_ Cayde yelled, while every intact console in the bridge lit up, their screens showing flashing sprays of gibberish and alien code.

The neo-quarian was already jumping back, tumbling through a grainy, low-res hologram displaying the battered remains of the frigate. Consoles surrounding her erupted in sprays of electricity and sparks like something from a pre-space sci-fi vid, and blue light swam around the cyberbrain, enveloping it and expanding.

And then it began to stand up.

"Oh, crap, that's not very shiny at all," Cayde-6 said, drawing the Last Word. He saw mesa rise up from her panicked tumble, a laser and kinetic pistol in hand. She started to level them at the glowing figure in the middle of the bridge, but froze.

The blue light shifted to a mixture of red and yellow, the figure resolving into a humanoid form. Flickering bits of light ran through the figure's body, like streaming alien code, and it…flickered, for lack of a better word, jumping back and forth by a few centimeters every couple of seconds. The cyberbrain now formed the center of the thing's head, glowing white-gold orbs of light where most humanoids' eyes would be located, and a black cloud of smoke wafted off of its skull. A sleek, black weapon had formed in its hands, like a plasma rifle but with chunks of it cut away to reveal the gleaming green inner circuitry.

Mesa stared, eyes wide and glowing like distant, hazy suns, jaw dropping open, her shoulders rising and falling as she took sharp, horrified breaths.

"Mesa? What the hell is-" Cayde-6 stopped, because he understood. The glowing creature's form became more apparent, and he could see the thing's proportions. The shape of the hips and legs. The number of fingers.

It was a quarian.

* * *

Cayde-6 takes a long drink.

Shepard shares it with him after a moment. The Exo watches him swallow. Waits for it.

The Sentinel lowers his drink, meets the Exo's eyes, and says what everyone usually says at that moment in the story.

"What the _fuck_."


End file.
